15th September 2024

Faith Amidst the Tempest

Passage: Matthew 8:23-27, Ephesians 2:20, 4
Service Type:

Following Christ doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing; it may lead to unexpected storms. However, these challenges are opportunities for Jesus to reveal His power and for our faith to grow. The key is not to focus on the tempest or second-guess our decisions, but to rest in the knowledge that Christ is present in our circumstances. When we truly grasp that Jesus is ‘in our boat’, we can find peace amidst turmoil, knowing that He is in control and working out His purposes, even when He seems silent or inactive.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Now passage today, we’ll keep those words up there on the screen so you can follow through. I’m not going to give you other verses, but this is where we’re speaking from these verses, verses 23 to 27. We have a storyline here about the disciples following Jesus and finding themselves, it’s not working out. They followed him, but that ended up in a storm. I wonder whether anybody here as a Christian hasn’t had an experience that you thought

[00:00:34] you were doing what the Lord wanted you to do, but you ended up in a difficult scenario and raised the question, did I make a mistake in thinking that he wanted me to follow him in the case of the disciples in the boat and then go to the other side. That is a fairly often heard explanation by Christians as to what’s happened in their lives. And it’s not unusual for someone such as us who love the Lord to seek to follow Him and try hard to work out where that leading is. But then when a storm comes, we question whether we made the right decision. I won’t ask you to put your hand up, but my guess is that there are some of you here who might be thinking just that of you.

[00:01:27] That you can’t quite understand how when you did your best to follow Him you ended up in a storm. Well this was my experience too and I thought to give this sermon and report a little along the way as to some very big storms I got by seeking to follow the Lord’s leading. It began down at Wynnum at the Baptist Church, which used to be in the main drag of the Wynnum Shopping Centre, and I had been called there to be their youth pastor. The truth was that I wore the word pastor very tentatively because I knew of myself or believed in myself that I was really more of an evangelist then a pastor. Pastors were experts with people. I wasn’t sure that was me at all but I knew the Lord had already used me as an evangelist and I was wondering how this would work out but I believe that it was important to follow

[00:02:34] the Lord’s lead. And, the Lord had enabled a man who was the senior pastor who saw my dilemma because the committee was saying, We’re not gonna let you go into the system further into college and be trained as a pastor if you don’t admit you’re a pastor. I was actually following the principal’s advice, he was my dad, and my father, who used to teach about ordination that the people who you could get ordained were those on the Ephesians 4 list of well, Apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. And because Ephesians 2.20 said that, the apostles and the prophets were foundational, that they were once and for all chosen and didn’t need another set to replace them later. But the evangelist and the pastor and teacher were those if you had gifts anywhere there, then it was appropriate

[00:03:35] for you to be ordained by a denomination. And so on that advice, I’d gone into the college and started. The only trouble was that there were people in the Baptist group of churches who didn’t like the idea of sharing the organisation with evangelists. They saw them as people who do their own thing and to it outside of the denomination and don’t have to be taken into account.

[00:04:05] And they were militating against my ongoing acceptance. Anyway, that year that I was there as a youth pastor, the fellow who was a senior pastor went away on holidays and he left me to be steering the ship to be preaching the sermons. And I got going at the advice of the Secretary, a time when we had people come into Christ each service. We’d give an appeal. The Secretary said, Jim he told me off at a prayer meeting that I seem to be pulling my punches.

[00:04:39] And he said, next Sunday morning, I’m going to come and stand at the front to shake the hands of the people that come forward when you give the appeal. So he was putting me on the spot. And I did. And another man said he’d join him. And immediately on the Sunday morning, there were two young men who stepped forward and came to Christ.

[00:04:57] others who came to the Lord also, and there followed a whole series of Sundays where people were responding. Now, the Lord had really been speaking to me about preparing a set of messages for some crusade that was going to happen not just at our church but elsewhere. In fact, I don’t know where I got the idea from. I had just impressed on me. I needed to prepare 16 messages to get ready for some crusade that was yet to happen. But when the problem minister came back, he took over with me, and things continued to be happening with people coming to Christ. And it was a really good fellowship.

[00:05:42] I thought I’ve been following Jesus and things were going right because of that. Then suddenly the deacons and the pastor included hit me with a letter. The letter says we don’t want you going other places anymore, because I used to do a fair bit of flitting around to different churches. They said, we want you to be full-time, in fact we will pay you full-time, but you’re not to go elsewhere. They had, I think, so written because the Baptist Union were putting pressure on this point that I had to prove that I was a pastor. What could I do?

[00:06:20] Because I already had 16 messages prepared like the Lord had told me. Who was I going to obey? This was like a storm that was brewing for me with the Baptist Union and I’d been in storms with them ever since, on and off. And, well, what happened was, I said, well, I’m sorry. The Lord told me to prepare 16 messages, and I’ve got them ready, I’m going to have to do it, so I left the church. The Baptist Union committee that were running the business of ordination being dominated by people who think they wanted to keep it just for pastors, they crossed me off the list.

[00:06:57] I looked like I had nothing to do. I actually went back teaching high school. My dad gave me an evening class at the college to teach just on an area where one of my degrees was from that he thought that I could do and still be in the system. But I was basically kicked out. At a loose end, and this question that I’m sure the disciples faced came on me. I thought I was following Christ and all it did was get me in a storm. And behold, verse 24, a great storm arose on the sea. So the boat was being swamped by waves, but he was asleep.

[00:07:47] And it made no difference how I thought or how I talked or to whom I tried to find out what I should now do. I was back being a teacher, I didn’t mind being a teacher because I like doing that, but I didn’t know what to do. And it was like Jesus was asleep. It’s actually quite a test on you when you think you’re following him and yet you follow his lead and then you get a storm and then he seems to be asleep. I won’t ask you to put your hands up, but I know, if I did ask you all to put your hands up, if you’ve found Jesus asleep when you wanted him to be a lot more active, there’d be some of you who would. This is an experience that we often have, and I have been told by more older people, experienced Christians, that sometimes God tests us.

[00:08:47] And this was like a test for those disciples. Well, do you think that they passed the test or lost the test in the next verse 25, and it says, they went and woke him, saying, save us, Lord, we’re perishing. And he said to them, why are you afraid, O you of little faith? Now, Jesus was bringing out what the issue was. It was about trusting him, which is what faith is. You just rest in Jesus. And if you think about it, those disciples were stupid, because if Jesus was whom they were believing,

[00:09:32] beginning to learn that he was, what did they have to be afraid of? He was in the boat. How could it sink? And the man who is the king of kings, the one who was doing the miracles, he wasn’t seeming to be troubled, and he was sleeping. But they had to wake him up. Now interestingly, it raises a question as to whether the Lord wanted them to so wake him up or, as it applies to our lives, whether the Lord want you to keep running to him with this issue that you’ve got,

[00:10:08] this question that you may have. The answer to that is that he doesn’t actually tell them off for waking him up. He doesn’t tell them off for disturbing him. He actually likes us taking things to him, and so he doesn’t tell them off for disturbing him. He tells them off what for? For disturbing themselves and not simply trusting. If you’ve been through one of these periods of time when the Lord seemed to be asleep on you and wasn’t really doing what you were expecting him and you thought you were following

[00:10:48] and you just ended up in a storm. The answer is… Listen, the answer is to depend more not on what you think should have happened or should not be happening, but on the fact of who’s in your boat. I sort of wrote down Jesus’ sleep on my boat… I try and put a title on all my sermons now to make them more organised in my old age and not look like I’m preaching things other people can’t follow. Jesus is asleep in my

[00:11:24] boat. You see, they’re all worried about the storm. They’re all worried about their decision to follow Jesus. He got them to go in the boat. What they should have been concentrating on is, who have they got in their boat? Or, he’s actually probably his boat, I don’t though he had gotten them to a ranger boat standing by. But if you know that Jesus is in your boat, nothing else matters. And that’s what you leave your faith with. Don’t be second-guessing as to whether you’ve made a bad decision or whether you’ve done the wrong direction or whether you haven’t failed to pick up the vibes. Put your rest in who’s in your boat. God wants me to tell someone that tonight. Give your rest on who is in your boat. O you of little faith.

[00:12:28] Well, Jesus did answer their requests, curious they are not that we perish. So that’s how the song goes on based on this… I will never forget my dad making a joke on one of his sermons. When he got to this point of the disciples waking up Jesus he changed to the wording of a song that Anyway, the wrong concentration by disciples as to what has gone wrong. Well, nothing’s gone wrong if Jesus is in your boat. That’s the point. Why are you afraid, O you of little faith? But Jesus also, in the right moments of time, does handle the storm, just that He doesn’t always do it as quick as we might want. He rose, and he rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, what sort of man is

[00:13:33] this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him? They learnt a lesson by that storm, that It was worth more than 10 of just listening to a discussion. They learned who he was, as the One whom the winds and the sea obey. That was what was going to happen to me. I was quite put out by the Union, kicking me off their list. My dad did get me to teach a course in the evening for students who didn’t have good of English yet, that they would get them warmed up and before they came to college. Sitting in the class was a fellow who was a youth leader, not pastor but youth leader, up at Mount Gravatt Baptist Church. He had been given a vision of there being an evangelistic crusader at his church.

[00:14:32] The vision was actually a very sharply defined picture of the finalKnight when the invitation was given for the young people who wanted to come to Christ to go down the front, and he knew all the young people by name and he saw where they were standing. He was amazed by this vision. He believed that he was going to be the preacher. Anyway, when he was in the class that I was teaching it was on Psychology of Religion. He came to me afterwards and he said, I had a vision. And he told me about the young people coming and standing on a certain spot at the front of his church

[00:15:18] in the final day of the crusade. But he says, I just assumed I was going to be the preacher but God just told me in your lecture that it’s to be you. So the very next Wednesday night was a members meeting at his church and he took me along to see the deacons first. I didn’t have a very good reputation with them. I had longish hair and I think I had a beard. I wore jeans and they were more conservatively minded. They threw the idea out of the crusade that Russell suggested. The following day was the members’ meeting. At the members’ meeting in the middle, he stood up and told the people how they killed his idea and asked the people to decide.

[00:16:14] They told the deacons they were wrong and to organise it. There were some very funny looking faces on the deacons. That crusade happened. It went across 4 months. And on the final night of the Sunday night, young people at Responda came and stood in the exact places Russell would have the vision of them standing. It didn’t fix my problem of the Baptist Union, because having a crusade and proving the evangelism was working didn’t help. They said that there were people who

[00:16:49] wanted our denomination to have ordination so people getting ministers to be ministers, to be just forepastors and didn’t want these evangelists getting in there. So I didn’t have anything to do, and my dad didn’t know what to say. It was his college, he was kicking out his son but he had to go along with it. I got the idea of if I go overseas I always wanted to go for a trip to America and I registered myself in Dallas Theological Seminary to learn there and got my tickets and off I went. And I began a Master’s Degree in theology and thought, well, something good has come out of all of this trouble that I’ve had.

[00:17:37] The only problem was the man who led the theology sector had called me in right at the start and then said, what’s your interest? Tell me, what’s happening in Australia, that you could do something significant about? I told him that there’s this big struggle between people whose theology is more reformed and more Calvinistic, more of an election, and the people who are evangelistic. It’s causing quite a problem at one of the Bible colleges, which was what is now BST. It’s a problem that needs to be resolved. Theologically, he says oh good. He says you can do your thesis on that topic. In fact, the wording that would work for you, he said,

[00:18:18] is to study about the apostles and whether they were persuasive or not because the Reformed people don’t think you should be persuasive, because that would mean it’s not God doing it. He sent me to do this research and the final words he told that man say, Charles Wowry was his name. He said to me, you’d better go to the library and look up who was written on this topic you’ve got to disprove their works if they’ve written on the other side of the issue.” When I looked it up, I found an article that had a title, The Perils of Persuasive Preaching, but it was written by one of the professors of the Dallas seminary

[00:19:03] whose area was the preaching, and he was one of my teachers. I had to do sermons in front of him. In fact, I already had a bad rapport with him because he told me off, You get too excited. And he said if you keep doing that you will cause people to be persuaded but it will be human persuasion and that’s not the persuasion of God. So I was already in trouble with him. Anyway he found out through the students somehow or somehow what I was doing my thesis on and that it was to disprove his article.

[00:19:37] That article’s title was The Perils of Persuasive Breaching. Then he got the faculty to pass a motion that my thesis was cancelled. I had it nearly finished and was getting ready to graduate. There was a professor in the theology. He was a newer person who was my actual supervisor who had had pressure put on him by all the a byed faculty that my thesis would be cancelled. And this man wrote me a letter that I am cancelled and I have to start another thesis but not in theology, something in a different area. Well, I really was in a fix. Talk about being in a storm, it seemed to be happening to me all the time. And I thought it was because I was following Jesus

[00:20:34] that it was actually coming together with something significant to write about for the thesis. But now, I was being kicked out of the thesis. Well, they had a chaplain in that place. And the chaplain in that place, Dr. Sumi, had been a pastor up in Chicago, a very big church, but he gained kidney disease. And he had to take a job where he could mission on dialysis machines most of the day. And he did his chapel leading in the morning,

[00:21:04] and then proceed to be on the dialysis machine the rest of the day. But he was a very lovely man, and I perceived to be a godly man so I took my thesis to him. And I said, here is what’s happened. I’m a bit afraid of what’s occurred is that I’ve been too Australian, because I had discern that the Americans are far more obedient to their teachers. And we Australians, like I know, because when

[00:21:30] you’re a lecturer at our college, the students are like the ballers, and they consider you to be the batsman, and they try and dish up a question that gets you tricked, and they’re all glad if you can’t answer. But it’s a bit of a game you do , and that’s what you enjoy doing when you’re in Australia. And I guess I had asked a few difficult questions and had not listened to the advice of some of these professors.

[00:21:54] And I said to the chaplain and I’m wondering whether it’s just I’ve been an Coming Indigenous or not nicely operating student. And he said, give me the thesis. I’ll read it, because I got nothing else to do. And across three days, he read it. And then he called me and he says, Jim, I agree with you as to what was written in the thesis. And he said, what’s more, he said, this is American accent.

[00:22:21] And he says, you’ve come too many thousands of miles to now change that pitch in your propellers. And he said, you’ve got to stick to your guns. So I wrote a letter back to my advisor and said well I’ll take the thesis to another university if you keep insisting because I knew the advisor did agree with what we’d together done. And he got back to me and said, oh I’ll take you out for tea. only McDonald’s that he took me out to but he took me out to tea and said Iím sorry he says and but Iíve got to put my career on the line because Iím going to agree with you and your thesis and weíll see what happens but where both might be leaving together is

[00:23:04] how he worded it. I canít remember the exact wording but he was really taking a big step of danger for Well, the other faculty backed down. My thesis went through, they only gave me a B+, mind you, which was annoying. But it passed and I graduated with my Master of Theology. And the thing was, I’d run out of money and I’d bought a big car, 400 cubic inch Catalina Pontiac, and I’d had no money left. And I would run out of food money, too. And I went to get all my stuff from the post office, where you have a box, get everything cleared out, so I could leave. But I had nowhere to go. And another student met me and said, I hear that you’re being invited to go to a conference in Kentucky. And he said, that’s have a half way home for me, can I arrive with you?” He says,

[00:24:06] and I’ll pay for the gas. And he didn’t know, I didn’t have any money left to pay for petrol. But he said he’d pay for the gas. So, I went to this conference, 6 weeks long it was, and at the end of it, I then had the car. I’d spent the money, the friends help for money. Someone put $50 under my door. I don’t know who did it. But I had $50 to drive somewhere.

[00:24:32] and nowhere to go. I’d heard about Wheaton Grad School, and it was built in the building the Billy Graham people gave to them. The ground floor was a big museum, and evangelism, and I wanted to look at that museum. I drove toward there, and when I got there, pretty well, getting out of the gas, having no money and nowhere to stay. I booked myself in as a student because you get the bill later.

[00:25:00] Anyway I won’t go into too many details but I ended up having another degree in New Testament from Wheaton college. But the dean of the students called me in and says oh no, we happen to know about you. And wasn’t sure what he was talking about but it turned out that the chaplain used to come up for board meetings of the Billy Grammer socialization meetings and getting, they were all cosy with the Wheaton college personnel.

[00:25:27] And he, I think, told them of my thesis. And he was on evangelism. And a man with a smile who was the dean, he says, and we want to send you home to Australia, because next year, in Australia, is a lot of Graham Organization Crusades, and Leighton Fort in particular, will be doing four reach-outs that you’ll start with, and then transfer them to one of Billy Graham’s ones. Well, those four reach-outs Layton Ford did included it in Brisbane here. And they’d had someone chosen to be the person, that helps get all of the churches organised

[00:26:08] in their visitation of houses. It was called Operation Andrew, and a particular person had stopped being that and I’m going to fix it in the last moment but I arrived and they say, you can do the job. This is the Layton Ford team. I had a job of going around and visiting all the denominational leaders about their involvement in the Leighton Ford Crusade, and which areas they would be visiting and whatever on the pamphlets they would need. I had a big lot of pamphlets of the Leighton Ford which had the Reverend Leighton Ford. As I went in to see the superintendent of our Baptist Union and put these pamphlets down on his desk I said, notice how they are calling him the Reverend Lat Williams Ford because his Presbyterian denomination in Canada has ordained him as

[00:26:57] an evangelist and I said I need you to do the same for me and turned around and walked out. And so that man took up the challenge and went back to the committee and told them what was going on. And they said we’ll make an exception, just one. We will ordain Jim, and we will ordain him in the pastoral way but we will make a mention of his evangelism. And that’s how God arranged for me to get through. Now why do I link all that talk to this passage? Because those disciples thought the storm meant they were perishing. But when Jesus is in your boat, it doesn’t mean you perish you. It means he’s fixing. He’s doing something. And if you think through some of the things

[00:27:51] that the Lord did, first of all, storms don’t last forever. They might be now looking so terrible, but there may be a time when things look different. Secondly, it gives an opportunity for Jesus to show his power. I tell this story, I’ve just told you, some of you have probably heard it before, both of them. I can’t stop talking about it. It’s one of the greatest events of significance in my life following Jesus. I thought it was a storm that following him led me into, but instead I got to see his power. And those disciples come to the same conclusion. They’ve been marveled, verse 27, saying, what sort of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey him? It does something to you when you see Jesus at work overcoming the issues and working out his purpose all the time. And it wasn’t a mistake when I took on board to do that crusade, the one by the way that finished

[00:29:08] and the finishing night when they saw the people standing at the spot Russell had seen in his vision, that they were so to stand. God brought about his actions, and it was worth it all the way and to see the power of Jesus. What also I think we learn here is that the object of our faith are not just the little things we’re believing for, but believe rather for the joy of knowing that Jesus is in your boat. Those disciples should simply have understood that that boat was unsinkable while Jesus slept in it because He was the one that the winds and the Seas obey. They weren’t going to swamp it and drown the one who is the master of the seas. And that was a lesson worth learning. And you can apply that to everything, I can apply that to the Baptist Union, I don’t have to get uptight about them,

[00:30:12] or people who might make decisions that would look to me not helpful. Because Jesus is the One who’s really in charge, and that is a fantastic thing, that is a fantastic thing. Well I hope that this episode of Matthew 8 verses 23-27 lasts in your mind that where to place your faith is in the person of Jesus. Not the things you think He’s going to do for you, because you might have guessed wrong. Or you may have had an inkling right, but didn’t discern the way He was going to bring it about. I have lots of things happen in my life, I don’t really know what is going on. I will just leave that to Jesus, He will work out the details, and how it’s going to work out. I want to say something very restful about that position to be. Something very

[00:31:15] rest for when you just surrender the whole deal, the issue and all to him. It is sort of a lesson that you will learn along the way to rest in the facts of Jesus and not necessarily your assumptions as to what he’s going to do or what you’re going to do or anything. Just know that Jesus is in your boat. Jesus is asleep in my boat. I hope you remember my sermon tonight. Let me pray and I’ll finish. Heavenly Father, thank you for this wonderful passage. Thank you for what happened in the passage of the disciples learning to trust that they had Jesus in their boat. And may each of us do that tonight in our rest. Please increase our faith and rest in you that you know what you’re about in Jesus name. I pray. Amen

Listen to a recent sermon