Who Is This Jesus - Dr. R. C. Sproul

as we continue our study of the holiness of God we recall that in our last session we looked at theories that were espoused in the 19th century by such men as Karl Marx and Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud that sought to give a psychological explanation for the origin of religion saying that people's religion ultimately is motivated out of a deep psychological need that we have of self-preservation that out of our fears of death and of sickness and of of the forces of nature we conjure up a religion by imputing personality to storms and tornadoes and

earthquakes and the like in hopes that we will find some way to appease these deities that reside in these hostile forces that we may be able to survive them I spoke at that time of the trauma that exists with respect to holiness and I suggested that if we were to invent a religion out of a pure psychological motivation to divert the threatening aspects of nature we probably would not invent a religion that had at its center a being who is absolutely holy because what I'm suggesting is that there is nothing more frightening than a holy

God now there are incidents that this idea comes across very clearly on the pages of Sacred Scripture and I'd like to turn our attention in this session to the Gospel according to st. mark where mark tells us the story of an event that took place on the Sea of Galilee this is found in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark beginning at verse 35 we read these words on the same day when evening had come he said to them let us cross over to the other side when they had left the multitude they took

him along in the boat as he was and other little boats were also with him and a great wind storm arose and the waves beat into the boat so that it was already filling but he was in the stern sleep on a pillow and they awoke him and said to him teacher do you not care that we are perishing and he arose and rebuked the wind and said to the sea peace be still and the wind ceased and there was a great calm and he said to them why are you so fearful how is it

that you have no faith and they feared exceedingly and said to one another what manner a man is this that even the wind's and the sea obey Him this I think is an extraordinary account of an event that takes place in the life of Jesus terraces society in the literary world that is called the dark and stormy night crowd or club because they sort of make fun at the triteness of those mystery stories that begin with the expression it was a dark and stormy night well I'm glad that mark doesn't begin section of his gospel

with that introduction but that's basically what he's saying there was when the evening had come and there was this storm that arose on the sea so it's perfectly proper to say it was a dark and stormy night when this event took place that was recorded for us here in the gospel it was at night and the purpose on this occasion for the disciples to go into their boats was not to go fishing but simply to remove Jesus from the pressure and the push of the crowds and multitudes that had surrounded him and to go on

to the other side of the lake of Galilee which is a rather large lake sometimes it's called the Sea of Galilee if you've ever been to Palestine perhaps you've had an occasion to even go out on that sea when I was in Israel we took a large boat to ride across the Sea of Galilee and the tour guide at that point made mention of these sudden storms and indicated to us that even with modern naval equipment and navigational techniques that these storms that come from time to time can still be life-threatening there are reasons for

this if you ever looked at a map of Palestine and see where the sea of galilee is situated you see that it is just to the east of the mediterranean sea and just to the west of the desert and the natural configuration there is of such that there's kind of like a channel almost a wind tunnel that is fixed in the earth so that these storms can amass quickly and erupt violently from off of the sea and come across the surface of the land in what amounts to a wind tunnel and hit the sea of

galilee and turn it into a churning tempest without warning well as obviously one of these storms that came up suddenly and precipitously that night on the Sea of Galilee now we remember that Freud said that religion is provoked by our psychological need to find protection against the forces of nature and that now forces like storms tornadoes are traumatic to our psychology we are afraid of them and his theory of man's fear of nature is borne out by Mark's description and also later in Luke's description of the same event here because it tells us that when

this storm arose the disciples became afraid they were fearful they were afraid of the clear and present danger of this impersonal force of nature the storm that had arisen now keep in mind that these were professional fishermen these were not in expert novices who did not know how to operate a boat in troubled waters they were experienced they were knowledgeable but this storm arose with such ferocity it was so fierce that even these seasoned veterans were frightened and what do you do when a crisis like that occurs the first thing people do is they look

for their leader so they turned to look for Jesus for help and what do we read but that Jesus is in the back of the boat sound asleep have you ever met people like that I can remember one time being on an airplane with dr. James Montgomery Boyce and we were in a violent storm and I was sitting there holding on for dear life and I leaned over to say something to Jim and Jim has his head back against the pillow and he's sound asleep I shook him welcome up and I said Jim you know

that's really choppy he said yes isn't it great it's like being at the amusement park I said well here's a real Calvinist you know enjoys this sort of thing I didn't but you know people like that kind of makes you matter they can sleep through this kind of trauma well there's Jesus and peaceful sleep totally unconcerned and so the disciples go over to him and they shake him and rouse him from his sleep and say master do something or we perish I have no idea because the Bible doesn't tell us what it was they expected

Jesus the devil I can't imagine maybe they expected him to pray because they had seen the efficacy of his prayers before but one thing I think we can conclude with a high degree of probability is that they did not expect Jesus to do what he did Jesus appraised the situation saw the storm and opened his mouth and uttered a command he spoke a command to forces that were impersonal there was no demon in the sea no demon in the wind for Jesus to rebuke he was speaking to what we would call blind impersonal forces and

with a loud voice speaking to the wind into the sea he said peace be still and instantly the sea was like glass there wasn't the slightest zephyr in the air total calm descended on the scene calm of the wind calmness of the sea calmness in Jesus calmness was everywhere except in the hearts of the disciples we would expect in this story that the reaction of the disciples would be unmitigated elation and joy you would think they would throw their saw Westers in the air and say thank you Jesus for saving us from the dreadful force

of impersonal nature instead the point I want us to see here is that the Scriptures described the reaction of the disciples after the threat of nature had been removed to be a response of the increase of their fear the bible said and now they became exceedingly afraid or very much afraid not of the storm out of the wind not of the water but of jesus now they frozen butt quaking before this man who had by divine imperative commanded nature to do something and nature obeyed it and they say what manner of man is this that

even the wind's and the sea obey Him let me take a little license here with that question whether we think about it consciously every person that we meet or encounter on the street in the city in the village we do an instantaneous assessment of that person inside our response mechanisms we're making an evaluation friend or foe is that person approaching me harmless ordained as we walked down the street we just casually observe our eyes are scanning around and when we see people smiling we feel comfortable if we see somebody approaching us with a scowl on

our face we become tense and protective if they have a knife raised in front of us we become exceedingly tense and defensive but we are in a sense running through the computer of our brains categorizing classifying types of people that we've encountered because in our experience we have met kind people gentle people docile people aggressive people angry people hostile people mean people and violent people and it's just a matter of human defence to have a mechanism of classification and assortment that we are using at every moment that we meet other human beings we are reading

their body language reading their posture to make sure that it's safe to be around them this is exactly what the disciples were like they did the same thing but now they had just witnessed Jesus calming the storm and their computer brains were racing with classification and assortment trying to come up with a category into which they could put Jesus what manner of man is this and they couldn't come up with a category they realized that they were in the presence of one who appeared as a human being like every other human being but who had

now just done something that put him in a class by himself that made him soui gay ngerous completely other or different or alien from any human being they had ever met because they had never met a person who could stand in a boat in the middle of a storm and say peace be still and have a storm quit on command what is this and they were terrified what manner of man was it it was a holy man a man of transcendence reference and other nests who was the supreme alien before whose holiness people who were

formerly comfortable in his presence were now terror-stricken and would have welcomed the raging sea to give them respite and you see what Freud missed Freud was right that we are frightened by impersonal forces of nature but a tornado is not Holly the plague was not wholly an earthquake is not holy and as terrifying as they may be they're not nearly as terrifying as personal holiness the sociologists anthropologists and psychologists tells us that one of the leading phobias from which we suffer is the phobia called xenophobia fear of foreigners fear of strangers black people tend to

be somewhat fearful of white people white people tend to be fearful of black people because they are foreign and strange they have a different way of doing things they have a different culture and there's a reason why birds of a feather flock together and why people have like backgrounds and so intend to habitually congregate with themselves in a segregated way not simply or merely driven by bigotry but driven by fear by the strangeness of trying to adapt to another environment to adapt to another culture in anybody who has ever moved from one nation to another

and has had to go through that cultural adaptation understands cultural shock and we have a tendency to fear that which is different from us the alt xenophobia from which we suffer is a fear of the ultimate stranger this mysterious stranger who is holy we are not comfortable in the presence of the holy indeed holiness is traumatic what manner of man is this that even the wind's and the sea obey Him the answer is clear isn't it he is holy and when that holiness breaks through the veil of his human nature people [Music] you you