[0:00] Good morning all, how are you? That's the kind of response that I like. Oh, whoo! Please turn with me in your Bibles to, we're gonna be in Mark chapter four.
[0:14] I know most of you are kind of expecting it's the Christmas season, so we have to hear a Christmas message, but one of the things that I find that a lot of people struggle with just during this time of year, if you're a parent, is how do I keep my children focused on Jesus during this season?
[0:37] Easy or tough, you guys tell me, easy or tough? All right, let me ask that question in a different way. Easy or tough? Is it easy to keep your kids focused on Christmas, on the true nature of it, or are they distracted?
[0:55] Distracted, right? There's a lot of different things going on. Whether it be at school, with their friends, family, they see this big green tree in their home. Some of you guys are getting gifts from relatives already.
[1:08] They're getting packed neatly under the tree. Your kids are starting to get a little expected. Some of you might even have those little notes, right? Boy, I'd really love it if Santa brought me this, right?
[1:21] Or Santa brought me that. There's just some of those things that you are dealing with. What's interesting is that the entire gospel of Mark actually is about trying to keep Jesus, the real Jesus, the focus amongst many gods.
[1:44] Mark was actually written in Rome to Romans, an incredibly majestic city. You actually had an emperor who thought he was God, who desired to be worshipped as God.
[2:01] You would also have statues, temples, ornaments, monuments built to a plethora of other gods as well. Essentially what happened when Rome would take over a nation, they would adopt their gods into their panoply of gods in order to kind of lessen the resistance of the people and saying, if you let us overcome you, we'll allow your gods to be worshipped as well, as long as you worship our gods too.
[2:36] Does that sound familiar to another culture, right? But that's how they work. So Mark, in writing this gospel of Jesus, is trying to make a big bang.
[2:55] So what he's doing during this time is he's trying to demonstrate exactly who Jesus is. So please turn with me to Mark chapter 4.
[3:11] We're going to begin in verse 35. And we're going to see that this is a message targeted primarily to the disciples as they needed to be reminded of who Jesus is as well.
[3:33] We're going to read starting in verse 35 through 41, this very, very familiar story. He begins, On that day when evening had come, Jesus said to them, Let us go across to the other side.
[3:52] And leaving the crowd, they took him who is Jesus with them in the boat just as he was. And other boats were with him. All right, where we are in the text of Mark is actually what scholars present as the very long day.
[4:10] If you go back in your Bibles to chapter 3, verse 19, they all believe that this has been one continuous day of Jesus teaching, of Jesus doing great miracles, of Jesus sharing these parables, which we learned a couple of months ago, on the sower.
[4:29] So it's this incredible section, this exceptionally long day. And it's a day we'll end where Mark is going to tell his disciples about the incredible power that Jesus has in opposition to the statues that everyone sees in Rome.
[4:50] In fact, this is the beginning of a section where Jesus will demonstrate his power over nature, demons, disease, and death.
[5:01] And if you understood about first century view on gods, they often thought that gods had power in only geographical areas. So the God of the Jews, you know, he's really great in Israel, but he's kind of not so good in Syria, right?
[5:20] That was kind of their main thinking. So here we're going to see Jesus actually leaving Galilee, leaving Israel to go onto the land of the Gentiles where he will demonstrate his power as well.
[5:38] So here he is setting out in a boat. With others following him. As we know that the crowds are no small thing, they're so huge in fact that the disciples said, hey, why don't we get you in a boat so you're not so crowded?
[5:54] Go out into the lake and preach from there. So these crowds are getting very big and he needs to preach. So Jesus is sensing that it's time to leave and head towards the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
[6:08] And he simply tells his disciples, let us go across to the other side. So he gets into his boat and begins to head over. Now I want you to get a mind picture of what this boat looks like.
[6:23] They actually made a discovery in 1986 and they were able to excavate a boat almost in the exact location where they believe Jesus is doing this teaching from.
[6:35] And it's a pretty big boat, but it's not exactly a small boat. It is a boat that they believe it's 27 feet long. It's about seven feet wide and it's about five feet deep.
[6:50] They believe that approximately 15 people could comfortably fit in this boat. It had places for four oars and a sail. So it's not exactly a small boat, but it's not a huge boat, but it's a boat of some size.
[7:07] It's not some canoe or a rowboat that we might use in one of the local lakes. It's a pretty big boat. So here is Jesus and the disciples making their way across the Sea of Galilee in the evening.
[7:23] Now, if you guys will check your bulletins, I call this a great day in the life of Jesus. And the reason is Mark is actually going to call our attention to this word great that he uses three different times in the passage.
[7:44] And I want you to pay attention. So the first use of the word great we find in verse 37. Check it out. Verse 37. And it says, And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was already filling.
[8:02] All right. To give you guys a concept of the word great, in the Greek, it means mega. Right? When we think mega, we're understanding that things are a little bit bigger.
[8:14] You know, sometimes McDonald's offers the mega meal. Right? It's not that you get a Coke this big. You know, you get that five-gallon piece of Coke that satisfies you for a month.
[8:27] Right? So it's big. How many of you guys have been to the West Edmonton Mall? A lot of you guys. Right? It's a place that you like to go. It's a pretty big mall. Right? It's a pretty big mall.
[8:38] Right? Yeah, it is. Right? It takes you a big part of your day to visit. There's an amusement park. I don't know if you guys know that it's actually the 19th largest mall in the world.
[8:52] It's actually now, I believe, the number one largest mall in North America. It's got some substance. It's got over 800 stores.
[9:04] They believe that they bring in or host over 200,000 people a day. I thought that was a big mall. Then I went to the Philippines.
[9:17] I'm in Manila. All right? You guys know what I'm talking about? They actually have a mall called the SM Mega Mall. This mall can actually fit over 4 million people inside.
[9:31] Okay? This thing is gigantic. It's massive. And there's a hockey rink and some laser tag places that you can do. But for the most part, it's just stores upon stores upon stores.
[9:48] West Inman Tamal. Right? You go to the Philippines, you hit the Mega Mall. It's massive. All right? So that's what we're talking about. It's not a small storm.
[10:00] You know, it's a big storm. No, no. What he's saying here, it is a mega storm arose. So we're going to say it is a mega windstorm. So things aren't going so smoothly here on their trip.
[10:12] The windstorm that they are enduring through has some power. And it tells us that the waves were breaking over and filling with water. In fact, this is no storybook storm.
[10:29] It is a storm of epic proportions. It is the type of storm where you actually begin to fear for your life.
[10:42] So scary was this mega storm that these seasoned fishermen were talking about men who lived on the Sea of Galilee their entire lives.
[10:52] These are expert people. These are expert people.