Peter Allison's sermon 'Testing? Testing? Testing!' explores the dual nature of Jesus as both human and divine through the biblical narrative of Jesus calming the storm in Luke 8 and Mark 4. Jesus' humanity is highlighted by his need to rest after an exhausting day, symbolizing his shared experience with human frailty and emotions. Despite the storm, Jesus' command over nature underscores his deity, echoing scriptural references to God's control over the natural world. The disciples' fear and assumptions about perishing reflect common human doubts, yet the sermon emphasizes that such storms in life are not always punitive but can be divine tests of faith. The narrative is compared with other biblical figures like Paul and Elijah, who faced significant trials after victories, suggesting that great challenges often follow great blessings. The sermon concludes by encouraging believers to find strength in weakness through the Holy Spirit, as demonstrated by the transformation of the disciples into bold messengers of the gospel.

Our scripture reading is from Luke chapter 8. And I would also like to read the parallel passage in Mark. Luke chapter 8 verse 22, Now it happened on a certain day that he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, Let us cross over to the other side of the lake. And they launched out. But as they sailed, he fell asleep.

And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water, and were in jeopardy. And they came to him and awoke him, saying, Master, Master, we are perishing. Then he arose and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water, and they ceased. And there was a calm, but He said to them, Where is your faith? And they were afraid and marveled, saying to one another, Who can this be?

For He commands even the winds and water, and they obey Him." And then Mark chapter 4, verse 35, Mark chapter 4 verse 35, And on the same day, When evening had come, he said to them, Let us cross over to the other side. Now 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 windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that it was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on a pillow. And they awoke him, and said to him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?

Then he arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. But 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, Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?

May Jehovah bring His judgments of old to mind and comfort us in them. Heavenly Father, we have heard your word and read. We ask that you would open our ears and our hearts that as we receive it, Lord, may it be mixed with faith. May it fall on soil that you have prepared. May it stir within us greater love and devotion to you, and lead to greater obedience.

In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. According to Mark, this was a very busy day. There are a lot of things that happened this day. Mark tells us that this event with getting into the boats and crossing the other side happened the same evening. If you look in Mark at all the things that are listed there, there's a number of...

This is the day that His family may have come to Him. This was the day that He told the parable of the sowers. This may have been the day that He was accused of casting out demons by Belzebub. And then at the end of this long day, Jesus told his disciples, let's go to the other side. Let's cross the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

And so they did. Got in a boat and started going across and Jesus went to sleep in the stern of the boat, in the back of the boat. Jesus demonstrates here His humanity. That's the first thing we see here. Jesus demonstrates His humanity.

He needed to sleep. He was tired. It had been an exhausting day. Just like after fasting 40 days in the wilderness, he was hungry. Here he is tired.

He is a human like us. He has emotions. When that woman touched him, he said that and was healed, he said, who touched me? Power had gone out from him. This kind of ministry takes human effort.

It takes effort. It wears us out. It can leave you emotionally drained. He felt pain. He experienced the sorrows, the anguishes of the people that He was interacting with.

He felt His own sorrows, His own pain. And so He's, because He's a man, just like us. Just like us. And so this is very evident here. Jesus had to be a man in order to pay for our sin.

Jesus had to be a man just like us. He had to have our same nature in order to offer up an acceptable sacrifice to God in our place. And This incident here is one of many throughout the Gospels that point to, that demonstrate that Jesus was a man. He was human, just like us. We can't pay for our own sin because we are sinners ourselves.

We are blemish. Remember throughout the Old Testament sacrifices had to be without spot. They had to be perfect. Because anything, you couldn't offer something to God that was imperfect. So Jesus is perfect.

He is that perfect sacrifice. That's one of the reasons we can't pay for our sins. There are other reasons. But Jesus is the perfect sacrifice. But he has to be human to do it.

An angel could not die in our place as our substitute, because an angel is not a human like us. It's a different order, a different race. That's truly a different race. Humans are all one race. So Jesus has to be a human just like us, and he is.

And this story here, this account demonstrates Jesus' humanity. He also has to be a human so that he can sympathize with us because he has experienced being tired, being worn out from his calling, from his labors. He can sympathize with us when we are tired and worn out from our labors, when we are hungry, when we are sorrowful, when we are weak. Jesus can sympathize with us because He has experienced all these same things that we do. So Jesus is in the back of the boat sleeping, resting.

It's been a long and worrisome day. And a great storm comes up. I think Jesus has been testing His disciples. Jesus has given to them a lot that day. This is the day that He, remember he had spoken all these parables, but the day that he had taken them aside and explained to them what these parables mean when the other people did not get that explanation.

And so they've been given great truths. Things that have not been explained to other people have been explained to them. They've been recipients of great blessing that day. They are also, As they go into this storm, literal storm, it's a storm that also is a test of their faith. As they go into this storm, don't miss the fact that they are completely in the center of God's will, as people like to say.

They're not in this storm because they have wandered from the path. They're not in this storm because they have not acted wisely. They're not in this storm because they've somehow not followed God's will. They are in this storm because they followed God's will. It was Jesus himself who said, let us go over to the other side of the lake.

And they were simply following what he had told them to do. And we can remember that just because there is a storm that comes into our life, it isn't always because we are being chastened for our faults. Sometimes we are simply being tested as the disciples were in this case. Jesus was testing them. And that often happens after great victories.

There come great tests. After great blessings are given. Great revelation. It's in the context of Paul being caught up into the third heaven, that he talks about the thorn in the flesh that he was given. It was a messenger from Satan to buffet him, not because he had sinned, but to keep him from sinning.

And keep him from pride because he had been given, He had seen things that he couldn't talk about, that no other man had seen. So there was given to him this. After Elijah's great victory on Mount Carmel, where he single-handedly, single-handedly, think about peer pressure, think about standing against what's wrong. He had single-handedly stood against the entire nation of Israel. There wasn't anybody else on his side.

Not Ahab, not the 900 prophets of Baal and Ashtoreh, not anybody in the nation of Israel. Single-handedly he had stood there And he had put himself in a very, you might say, humanly speaking, precarious position, challenging them to build an altar and to see who would answer. And after that, And God gave him a great victory because he trusted in God. There was a great victory that day. And all the people said, Jehovah is God, we will follow him because of his example.

And immediately after that, he was tested. Because Jezebel said, if I have anything to do with it, you are going to be like those dead prophets by tomorrow. And he became afraid. But he was tested. So it is often the case that after great victories and after great blessing, great revelation, that Satan comes to test.

Satan comes to try. And so it is in this case, Jesus here is testing his disciples. There's a big storm that arises. And that can happen on a lake. Galilee is a lake, kind of like our, it's an inland lake, It's very low, surrounded by mountains.

In some ways it's a lot like the Great Lakes. It is subject to having storms come up very suddenly. And you can have very large waves on these lakes that arise rather quickly. And so this is what they found themselves in. It must have been An incredible storm because remember these are experienced seasoned fishermen.

Peter, James, John, Andrew, these were fishing men. This sea is where they had lived, where they grew up, where they worked. They were experienced. They would have, you would expect that they would have seen most anything that that lake did. And yet these men are trembling.

They are afraid for their lives. The boat, which again these are experienced sailors, fishermen out on this lake, They are very afraid and they think that they are ready to die. Apparently the boat was taking on water and so they come to Jesus in desperation, in fear, and wake him up. But notice what they say, and I'm going to bring in what Mark tells us and what Luke tells us. When you compare these three accounts, there's also an account in Matthew, This is the nature of first-person testimony.

You might think, well, these are contradictory. No, they're not contradictory. This is what people are, this is how what they said is being recounted. And That's the nature of testimony. We all see things a little differently.

We perceive things a little differently. Each of these accounts is written from the perspective of that author. So they emphasize different things. They remember different aspects. They're all writing under the inspiration of God, but God is working through their own human nature, their own mind, their own understanding.

And so these three accounts, they all have slight nuances and differences. They emphasize different aspects of this story. So I'm going to put together here what Luke says and what Mark says because these are both true. The disciples are afraid that they are going to die. They're in fear.

They shouldn't have been. Jesus was right there in their sight. So they shouldn't have been afraid, but it's understandable that they were. If you've ever been on the water in the middle of a storm that comes up suddenly, you realize how vulnerable, just how vulnerable we really are. Look at what they say, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?

Do you not care that we are perishing? They put it in a question, but it's not a good question. It's really an accusation against Jesus. It's crafted from two wrong assumptions. First they assume they are perishing.

Now you might say it's a reasonable assumption, but it's not a true assumption. It's not true. They aren't perishing. They don't perish. The Lord is with them.

And it was clearly not His will that they would perish that day. See to say we are perishing is very different than we are in danger of perishing. They've made an assumption, we are perishing. And they're accusing Jesus then, secondly, the second assumption they make is that Jesus doesn't care. That Jesus doesn't love them or care about what's happening to them.

Don't you care? That's put in the form of a question, but it's really an accusing question. It's a whining question. They look at him sleeping there on this pillow in the back of the boat while they're in the midst of this terrible storm unlike anything they can remember. Otherwise they wouldn't be so concerned about it.

And they're a bit irritated that he's not responding like they are responding. He's not showing great concern. And so they make the unloving assumption that it's because he doesn't care. They're assuming evil about Jesus. And that great chapter on love says we don't assume evil about other people.

They've jumped to the conclusion, made the assumption that Jesus doesn't care about them. This is the kind of question that we often resort to. We can be like them very easily in our assumptions about unkind things about others. And even we can even put them in a question format, but it's obvious. We all know it.

We have various terms for it. We might call it passive-aggressive or these sort of things, but they're really just ungodly, ungodly words. When we're upset with somebody, we can very easily make these kinds of statements where you can't do this. Why can't you do this? Why can't you do this?

You don't know how to do this. You don't care about me. You don't you don't love me. Because you're not doing what I want you to be doing. Jesus has no duty, you know, to answer this question.

He's not answerable to us. The Psalms say, God says, if I was hungry I wouldn't ask you. He has nothing that He needs of us. He has no reason to give an account to us of anything. To ask a question like that is really calling somebody to give an account to us.

Well, God has no reason to give account to us. He's not accountable to us. But Jesus responds in a very gentle way toward them. He does rebuke them and we'll look at that in a minute, but he demonstrates, at least according to this text, he demonstrates his deity now. In falling asleep because he is tired, he showed that he is human, now he demonstrates to them that he is also God.

He is the God-man. And it says that he rebukes the wind and the raging of the water. And why would you rebuke wind and water? I mean you think of a rebuke as something you would do to a person who is done wrong. A rebuke.

But Jesus says he rebuked these elements, these inanimate objects. Aren't they just responding according to their nature? Aren't they just doing, they're not moral agents, they don't have personality. Why is he rebuking them? I think he is rebuking them because he is recognizing the place of sainthood in stirring them up.

Edward Reynolds, a Puritan, said that sainthood is called a dragon to denote his malice, a serpent to denote his subtlety, and a lion to denote his power. And the scriptures speak of the power of Satan, that he rules the world. He's called the Prince of the power of the air, and he's called the God of this world in John and in 2 Corinthians 4. We read in the Bible that He can control the forces of what we call nature, natural forces like lightning and the wind. In Job, it is Satan that brings a wind that destroys the house of Job's children.

Satan brings fire from heaven that destroys Job's flock of sheep. He can control the bodies of animals. Remember the demons entered the pigs and caused the pigs to run over a cliff and drown into the water. That's not what a pig would normally do. But moved by Satan, they did.

Satan can bring disease, like Job. Job's boils. Or because we came from Satan, we read in Job. Or when Jesus heals a woman and he's questioned for it, he's challenged because he did it, on the Lord's Day He attributes her illness as being bound by Satan, as a bondage of Satan, an affliction of Satan. Satan can bring memories to our mind.

He entered into Judas. And so Satan is very real and he is very powerful. And I think in rebuking the wind and the waves, Jesus is recognizing that they were being moved by Satan. That they were being stirred up by Satan. We know the scriptures say that the whole creation groans and travails with birth pangs.

That creation is under bondage, but that it will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. So in rebuking the wind and the waves, Jesus is rebuking the bondage under which Satan has placed God's creation. And when he rebukes Satan here, and he commands the waves to be still, they are. Immediately. There's no die down, apparently.

They immediately cease. The wind ceased and there was a great calm. He demonstrates his power here over Satan. That Satan goes no farther than what God has ordained. And that all that he does is under God's control.

Jesus demonstrates his power as the rightful owner of heaven and earth because he is the creator. He demonstrates his powers, the rightful owner over creation. He's the rightful master. Satan is a usurper, a thief who has an imposter. So in using His voice to control the wind and the waves, Christ demonstrated His deity, the fact that He is God.

And the disciples ought to have recognized this because many places speak of the voice of God controlling the natural world. Psalm 29 is one of the places that come to mind first, but there are many other places as well in Psalm 18. It says that the Lord thunders from heaven, the Most High uttered His voice, hailstones and coals of fire. Or in Psalm 46, the nations raged, the kingdoms removed, He uttered His voice and the earth melted. But Psalm 29, which you're probably very familiar with, speaks extensively of the voice of God controlling the natural world.

It's the voice of God that is powerful. It's The voice of God that breaks the cedars in a thunderstorm that makes them skip like a calf and that blows them around like they were light things. It's the voice of the Lord that makes the deer give birth. It's the voice of the Lord that makes the deer give birth. It's the voice of the Lord that strips the forest bare.

The voice of the Lord that does these things, brings the storm, and that causes the storm to cease. And so when Jesus spoke like this, he was... The disciples should have recognized that this is the voice of God, that Jesus is God, is God and man. But They didn't. They didn't.

And their response is, who is this? Who is this? That even the wind and the waves obey Him. And they became afraid when they should have remembered their scriptures that said God is the one whose voice controls the wind and the waves. But in this, I think we can See that Jesus uses weak and sinful people as his messengers.

Jesus chose twelve ordinary people. People that have weak faith. People that didn't know the scriptures well enough to recognize that it was God's voice that controls the natural world. He uses these people to be the foundation of his church, to be the messengers proclaiming his gospel. Because the power that enabled these men to be the bold messengers of the gospel, to be the foundation of the New Testament Church.

It was not their own strength, but it was the presence of the Holy Spirit. When they look to Christ for strength, Paul said that he boasted in his infirmities because Jesus makes people strong in their weaknesses. Paul said he boasted in his infirmities and his needs precisely because that was when the power of Christ rested upon him. That was when Christ's strength was most brilliantly displayed through him. My grace, God told him, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength, my strength, God's strength is made perfect in weakness.

So Paul says, therefore most gladly I will boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities. He goes even farther, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong." We are weak like these disciples. We're no different.

We're not better than they are. Their strength was in Christ. They were made bold by the Holy Spirit. And so our weaknesses, our inabilities, our infirmities are no excuse for us today for why we can't do great things for Christ. Because it's the Holy Spirit that enables us to do anything at all.

And we can learn in our weaknesses, in our infirmities, in our limitations, we can learn that in those the power of Christ rests upon us and that when we are weak, then we are strong. Jesus takes weak people, people with weak faith, people with limitations, and He makes them into the trophies of his grace, into the foundation of his church, into the messengers of his gospel, into warriors for his kingdom. May the Lord use us for the advancement of his kingdom as we look to him and to his Holy Spirit for strength and for ability. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Your Word is sufficient For everything that we need, for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that we may be thoroughly furnished to every good work.

Work. Father, make us able and skilled with your word, able to wield the sword of the Spirit, not in our own strength, but by the power of your Holy Spirit, grant to us our faith, the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, and feet that are shod with the gospel of the preparation of peace. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.