Good morning friends. How are you doing today? If you’re visiting, my name’s Alex. I’m one of the pastors here. It’s great to have you with us. We are about to wrap up our series on the Sermon on the Mount. Some people have called this Jesus Kingdom Manifesto. It’s this idea that that, that’s not in the right place.

There we go. Jesus Kingdom Manifesto. Some people have said that this is maybe like a beginner’s guide to the Kingdom of God. of heaven. If you were to begin reading from the beginning of Matthew’s gospel, this is the first bulk. piece of Jesus teaching that you would get. What I’m going to ask you is, if you have a text in front of you, if you have the scriptures in a paper copy, I’m going to ask you to turn it to Matthew chapter 8.

If you have a phone that you sometimes read them on, I’m going to ask you to grab your phone. I’m going to ask you to Google Matthew 8 worst case scenario, but you can also use a Bible app or something like that if you already have one loaded. I would love you, as we carry on with this piece of teaching, to, to catch the flow of what we’re about to read.

We just heard the summary, or the end to the sermon proper. Jesus finishes his sermon on the mount with three big metaphors. He talks about the metaphor of a journey with a gate that enters into a road. He has the metaphor of fruit, and then he has the metaphor of houses. Do you ever have a Many of you never get to do this thing that I do, but sometimes when you do this thing that I do, you have this moment where you’re like, did the worship just do the sermon for us?

Because hopefully you caught some of the ways that those songs reflected some of the things we’ve read over the last couple of weeks. And then at the end, there’s a conclusion that Matthew, the author, gives. He says this in verse 28 of chapter 7. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed.

at his teaching. And we might say, yeah, it is amazing, teaching. Jesus is a great, compelling teacher. It’s maybe one of the first things that drew some of us in the room to Jesus, the wisdom of his teaching. We’ve talked regularly throughout this 12 month wander through the Sermon on the Mount. It has been 12 months, I think, since, 10 months since we started.

Aaron said, can we just start again from chapter 5 and just go around loop it? I was like, yeah. There may be other things to talk about first, but we will come back to it at some point. But throughout all of that teaching, we’ve been amazed perhaps at some of the ways that Jesus talks about some elements of ethics, the way he draws on the heartbeat of some of the Old Testament law.

The crowds were amazed at his teaching, but why? And this is their why in verse 29, because he taught as one who has. authority and not as the teachers around them. What we’re told is that what stands out to the crowds, what Matthew wants us to most know about Jesus teaching is that there was an authority to it.

During this time, a couple of things have happened. In chapter 5, before we begin the sermon, we read that Jesus intended to teach his disciples. He takes his disciples away to the mountaintop, and because of the curiosity around Jesus, A group of people follow. They are the interested ones, the kind of the on the edge, on the fringe, I’m looking in on who Jesus is, and maybe that’s how you might describe yourself right now.

He begins to teach, and at the end, by the time we get through all of this teaching, the crowds in general, the people who started off on the fringe, find themselves to be amazed because Jesus taught with authority. Authority is central to what they remember. Now, maybe there’s a whole bunch of things.

Sometimes when I’m trying to think about how we might perceive a word, I like to drop in on just an image search on Google, just to see what we take away from the words authority. And there’s the element of a king, like there’s that sort of figure to it. Apparently, according to this one, bad spelling goes with authority.

It’s Irish, they got authority here, or something like that. Aaron Bjorklund, you would have great authority. If, did you do this? Is this you?

And then I found this one that just I thought was really insightful. There’s like these images that tie into a modern understanding of authority. There’s maybe some kind of law enforcement type thing here. There’s maybe someone, like a professor, there’s some element to shame an authority according to this.

And then there’s maybe a lecturer. Of some kind. Here’s the trouble in understanding what they’re saying here. When we think about authority, what I would suggest is we tend to think about something that is put on. It’s not about the person necessarily, but about the role that they hold. In a Eastern understanding of authority, however it’s not derived just from position.

It comes from within. There’s something about the way that Jesus is teaching the crowds that says to them there is something about this person who he holds himself in a particular way. We’re not just talking. about charisma. We see that all of the time. When I was a teenager, my dad used to, he was head of a large group of surveyors, and so part of whatever he had to do at their annual meeting was he had to book the after dinner speaker.

And so one of those, events, he booked a well known politician from London in England, where we lived, and this politician came and started telling stories about the politicians that he had encountered and the way they were able to win people over. And he mentioned a politician from England in the 90s called Tony Blair, he was Prime Minister, fairly well known over here, and he said Tony Blair had this aura about him, you would go to meet him.

And you would say you’d go to tell him off, to tell him how bad his views were, and he said you’d find you’d sit there and you’d just go, Yes, Tony, I agree. Yes, Tony, I agree. Yes, Tony, I agree. And then you’d walk out and say, I didn’t agree with any of those things what’s wrong with me? And he said, perhaps most people would agree.

Most scary of all, he said, Bill Clinton made Tony Blair look like a complete amateur at this art. He was able to win you over in this delightfully winsome way. But that isn’t what this is talking about either. This is talking about an innate sense of personhood, this sense of confidence both in who you are and who God made you to be.

The Greek word used here is the word exousia. It is that sense of coming from within. Which is interesting. Daryl Bruner points out that until this conclusion, until the three metaphors that we’ve just walked through, Jesus has been decidedly, blazingly God centered, resolutely Father referring. And then suddenly there’s this switch in the last few metaphors where Jesus uses the word I a lot more.

and my a lot more, and mine a lot more. There’s this switch that we might see, and perhaps that’s where this center of authority comes from. What happens next though, as we get to chapter 8, is as informative, about authority and Jesus as the words we have just read. I would suggest the reason Matthew brings up this idea of authority at the end of the sermon is because he wants us to see what comes next, and he wants us to take something away about who Jesus is and what it means for us today.

If you go back to your text in front of you, chapter 8, we start with a story about Jesus healing a man with leprosy. After preaching a sermon and coming down from a mountaintop, Jesus finds a man on the margins of society, and he brings healing to him. He displays authority over every kind of sickness.

We skip on to the next little passage, verse 5. Jesus heals the servant of a centurion. And in the midst of that healing has this intriguing conversation with this Roman centurion who reportedly knows nothing about faith, about that same word, about authority. When Jesus offers to come and heal the servant, the centurion says to him, Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.

But just say the word and my servant will be healed, for I myself will be healed. I’m a man under authority with soldiers under me. I tell this one go, and he goes, and that one come, and he comes. I say to my servant, do this, and he does it. When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.

Authority is apparently what people took away from the sermon, and now we start to read these stories where this word starts to come up over and over again. And you get a sense that. There’s something that this author wants to share with his first audience. And with people like you and I. Next little pericope, verses 14 and 17.

And if you’ve got your scriptures in front of you, you can mark some of these. Jesus heals many. We’re told in this moment that he heals people that are demon possessed, that are sick with all manner of things. Next, there’s a little story for four verses about the cost of following Jesus. And then finally, at the end of the chapter, there is a moment when the disciples follow Jesus.

They’re already following him as a rabbi, but they are asked to follow him by putting their feet where he put his, and they step into a boat. And we get another story that seems to be telling us about Jesus following Jesus. And the authority that he holds. Again we’re pushing somewhere in a specific direction.

Authority as a term is one that we’re like, I don’t know how I feel about that but you’ll get, hopefully, in a moment, why Matthew thinks that this term is so important. In verses 23 through 27, we’re told about Jesus calming a storm, and that’s the story that I would like us to land on for a few moments.

Then he got into the boat, and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him up, saying, Lord, save us, we are going. To drown.

Sorry, I’m gonna, actually, I’m just gonna go back in here and I’m gonna read this to you. Otherwise, you’re not gonna get this flow of this at all. So gimme one second.

Then he got into the boat and suddenly his disciples followed him. Verse 23. Suddenly a fur storm came up on the lake so that the waves swept over the boat, but Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him up saying, Lord, save us. We are going to drown. He replied, you have little faith. Why are you so afraid?

Then he got up and rebuked the wind and the waves. And it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, What kind of man is this? Even the wind and waves obey him. Jesus, as we conclude this teaching of yours, as we try and capture hold of how people reacted to it when they first heard it, as we ask what the first writers wanted to say as they shared this, and we ask most importantly of all, what you have to share with us today.

And how it might transform us. Would you speak to our hearts? In the midst of a world that can feel like a storm at times, would you speak to us about how you carried yourself in this world? What it might mean for us today. Amen. His disciples followed him into a boat. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake.

So that the waves swept over the boat. Sea of Galilee, where a lot of Jesus teachings take place, is about 700 meters below sea level. What that means in practical terms, geographically, is this. It gets quite warm down where the lake is, and then when cold winds, like a cold front, a storm, comes in from the ocean, it hits the lake.

the top of the mountains on the east side of the lake most often. And as that cold water pushes down into the lake itself, suddenly the waves just jump up out of nowhere. To give you some sense of size proportions, Chatfield Lake is about 1, 400 acres in size. The Sea of Galilee is about 40, 000 acres in size.

So we’re somewhere around, 3, 000 acres. thirty five times the size of something like Chatfield. The disciples had planned on just, it seems, rowing over to the other side of the lake with Jesus. That would take about an hour of rowing. But in their terms, like for them in that society, a fairly casual row that might take them about an hour to get across.

And in the midst of this, one of these surprise storms comes out of nowhere and just begins to cause havoc with the boat. This is a picture from the Sea of Galilee. In nine, in, I think this was 2022. There’s this storm that had come in and destroyed some of the sea front. These storms still happen today.

In the midst of that storm, we’re told something fascinating. Jesus was sleeping. Jesus was sleeping. Jesus comes from a town called Nazareth. Nazareth is up in the hills. Jesus has called followers disciples, at least a third of whom, maybe half of whom, are fishermen. Jesus is with a group of people who have spent their entire life around water, around the lake, who have seen storms come in time and time again, who have probably got caught in some of them.

We maybe catch the inference that maybe this is a particularly bad storm. And in the midst of that, this guy from the hill country He’s sleeping, and they’re terrified. I want to give you a sense of what that must have felt like to his first followers. Probably really disempowering, probably really confusing to them.

A few years ago, I was up in Canada. And I was supposed to get to the airport. I’d been over to see Laura for a little surprise visit before we were married, and I’m traveling up from Seattle to Vancouver, and suddenly this big snowstorm comes in. One of those ones that kind of looks something like this.

This is a real life picture from the bus. It was a whiteout, suddenly just you could see nothing. And in the midst of driving, I start to get a little panicked about both our safety and whether we’re going to make it to the airport in time. I’ve never been in this kind of storm before. So I went up and talked to the bus driver for a moment and just said to him are we going to be okay?

Everyone around me is just, they’re dozing, they’re just fine, they’re not worried about it at all. And the bus driver looks at me and he says, Son, in Canada we call it a snowstorm when it gets over the hood of the car. And I’m like, okay, tell me what a hood of a car is. That’s not like familiar language to me.

You have to give me more than that. Give me a meters or feet or whatever you guys do over here. If you were to read this story as a person that knew the first century, knew the Sea of Galilee, You would assume when you read this story that Jesus would be the one that was panicked and the disciples would be the ones that were okay with the situation.

Jesus would be the one that couldn’t sleep, and the disciples are the ones that are like, Don’t worry, we see these storms all the time, we’ve dealt with them all of our lives. And yet, the tables are turned. The country hillboy. And the fishermen are panicked. Tells us something about the severity, perhaps, of the storm.

But more importantly, it tells us something about Jesus. In the midst of a giant storm, Jesus is a non anxious presence. Jesus is it’s okay. Jesus is asleep. Jesus is calm. That idea of being a non anxious presence is something that’s become popular language maybe over the last 20 or 30 years. It reminds me of a poem, this is the poem my dad used to quote to me most as a kid.

It’s from Raja Kipling. He would say this, if you can keep your head when all about are losing theirs and blaming it on you, it’s a gift to the people that you’re leading. In his book, Ed Friedman, writing on the work of Murray Bowen, who is. A guy who wrote a lot about family systems said this, The function of a leader within any institution is to provide regulation through his or her non anxious, self defined presence.

Long before anybody talked about stuff like this, Jesus exhibited some of those tendencies. We might say about Jesus way of being in the boat with his disciples that this was true. This type of presence for Jesus is rooted in his knowledge. of who he is and how the world really works. He’s a non anxious presence because he knows who he is and he knows how the world works.

We’ll unpack both of those in just a minute. In the midst of a storm, perhaps like any, unlike any I’ve seen in those recent years, Jesus is asleep and the disciples are panicked. The disciples went and woke him up saying, Lord, save us. You are, we are going to drown. I believe this is the first time they call him Lord rather than teacher.

It’s a movement for them. The disciples are worried that they are going to drown. I would suggest that you and I in life often suffer from what we might call the illusion of control. We believe we’re actually in control of more things. than we actually are, and then quite often something happens that sparks the sense of maybe I’m not in control at all.

It can be the tiniest things. that do that. To give you a metaphor, it’s the moment that a small stone in the road hits a wheel and knocks you way off course. Sometimes they can be fairly humorous in retrospect, and sometimes they can be deeply serious. Just recently, I had one of those moments where, you have your system of paying bills and sometimes you forget who you’re paying what to whom.

And I happened to look at the bank account and a chunk of money that I didn’t feel should have gone out had gone out of my account. And I had this moment of just starting with irritation, and then a moment of placing a quick phone call to the company that had taken the money. And then finding out that their offices were closed until at least another four days.

And suddenly feeling that awful sense of being completely disempowered. That sense of wanting to rage at somebody and having nobody to rage against. So I just shook my fist at the phone and had to hang up and leave it there. But it gave me this sense of the loss of control or the lack of control.

And this happens to us in all sorts of ways. Roger Roald Dahl, the writer, said of people that are very rich, that the very rich are enormously resentful of bad weather. It’s the one discomfort that their money cannot do anything about. This happens to everybody in all sorts of ways. And sometimes it’s those types of things that are somewhat incidental.

And sometimes it’s other things. Sometimes it’s a sickness that came out of nowhere. Sometimes it’s somebody in the business runs off with all of the money. Sometimes it’s a divorce that you weren’t expecting that you didn’t have to say yes to, and you didn’t get to say no to. Sometimes it’s something funny, humorous.

Sometimes it’s something deeply serious. It’s a life event. It’s a moment where we realize the things that we control are actually minor and the things that are out of our control. And with that comes this fundamental question. If I’m not in control, who is in control? If I don’t have this, who does have this?

If your world view is that this world came from somewhere, we don’t know where it appeared, somewhere through some particular method that nobody started, nobody began, then ultimately what you have to say is nobody. is in control of that. And then your only scenario is you just have to row harder. In the midst of the storm that tells you I’m not in control of this, keep pulling the oars and hopefully in the end you make it to shore.

The problem with that strategy is eventually there comes a storm that you can’t out row. And so the question becomes, What do you do then? This is one of those moments. It’s one of those moments where a group of people that have been for the most part in control on the ocean or on the sea suddenly realize there they aren’t in control.

Now the sea is acting in ways that it wasn’t supposed to act, that they hadn’t predicted for. And now they’re not in control, and they need help. This is this moment of, cry, this fundamental human reaction to any circumstance where we find ourselves out of control. This fundamental question of who is in control, and how do I get help?

What do I do now? This is all of the things that are happening in this text right now. Jesus wakes up, and he replies to them, You have little faith. Why are you so afraid? Little faiths is this term that he seems to use of his disciples. It’s maybe a little bit endearing. He came up, we talked about it in the Sermon on the Mount proper.

It’s this kind of gentle chiding way that he has with them at times. It’s not that they have no faith, they have some. But he’s you’re showing yourself to have little faith. You were fine until everything started to go wrong. And then, He got up and rebuked the wind and the waves. And it was completely calm.

There’s a beautiful juxtaposition that Matthew does. There’s the great storm versus the great calm that happens afterwards. In the midst of their sense of not being in control, the disciples ask Jesus for help and Jesus calms the storm, and then this is their response to that. Remember, we’ve had the crowds responding to him teaching with authority, we’ve had his authority over all sorts of sicknesses, and then in the midst of the storm, we’ve had this moment where we’re told the men are amazed, and asked, what kind of man is this?

Even the winds and the waves obey him. Even the winds and the waves obey him. This is a different kind of authority. Matthew, I would suggest, wants his first century listeners to know that Jesus still holds authority over everything. Because place yourself for a moment in the minds of a first century follower of Jesus.

There’s been the stories from the past. There’s been the disciples that have recorded all of the ways that Jesus did things in and amongst them. The stories of death. the stories of resurrection. And then there’s this story of ascension and a leaving behind of a group of people. But now the question is how do things work now he’s not here?

How do things work for a first century group of Jewish followers that it seems Matthew mainly writes to, who are constantly persecuted by the Jews that don’t follow Jesus? How does it work when you’re being persecuted by the Roman Empire, the greatest fighting force in the history of the world? How does it work now when it feels like we’re by ourselves?

Feels like the world is a mess, feels like nobody’s in control. Matthew wants that group of people to know the same Jesus that had authority, then has authority now. Does that sound like a message that people like you and I need in this century as well? That’s since when you look at something say, I’m not sure who’s got their hand on the steering wheel here Matthew says whatever it looks like however stormy it gets right now.

That’s same Jesus. He still holds authority now throughout Scripture There’s this fascinating relationship between God and the sea It goes back and forth in different places. In Genesis chapter 1, the sea, the ocean, is already there. The deep, it’s called in this case. And we’re told that the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

There’s chaos, there’s formlessness, and God creates in the midst of that. At the end of the book, and we’re gonna get to a series in Revelation in September, which I am both deeply excited for and already regretting, because it is just so complex. How many of you read the book of Revelation for your daily devotional reading?

There’s three hands, way to go. I have three friends out there. We’re going to get to that soon, but at the end, no spoilers, it says this, A new heavens and a new earth were created for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. For those of you that enjoy beach vacations, you’re like, wait, hold on a second, I love the sea why would you get rid of the sea?

But to people reading at the time, the sea was a place of a place of battle, a place of death, a place of chaos. And God will sometimes in scripture bring calm to that sea, but it’s almost like he’s against it, battling with it. In Psalm 67 we read this You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds, God our Savior, and hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas, who formed the mountains by your power, having armed yourselves with strength.

who still the roaring of the seas and the roaring of their waves and the turmoil of the nations. It’s like God beats them into order. But in this passage, something different is happening. In this passage, I would suggest Jesus is redeeming the storm as well to a degree. What we learn from this story is this.

When the world storms. The same God holds world, storm, and you. Holds the world, holds the storm, and you. Jesus could give them easy passage over the waves, and He doesn’t. He, to a degree, and I’m not gonna wade straight into this theological dilemma, but to a degree, at least in this story, the storm is allowed by Him, used by Him, and then calmed by him.

I would suggest in this story, we’re taught that Jesus uses those storms and moment in amongst those to transform us to create us as non anxious presences in the world. When other people go through those same storms, it would be really easy for us to say, God, you should just stop the storm. And sometimes he does.

And sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he calms the storm. And sometimes he calms his child. And we’re left to wrestle with the conundrum of that. Sometimes the storm stops and the boat continues to row calmly to the other side. And sometimes it feels like the water comes aboard, and the boat is sinking. And we’re told that in the midst of that same God is still there, still present, still with you.

Sometimes it feels like the God that wakes up in this story doesn’t wake up in our stories in this moment. And what we’re told is That’s okay that same God will one day renew all things even if he doesn’t renew them in the moments. We would love him to right now Richard Rohr, the writer, says this, At the edges of medieval maps were frequently penciled the warning, Here be dragons.

We confront these dragons when we approach the edge of our comfort level. The storms of life have a way of transforming. The writer Mark Sayers says, We have been taught by the great strongholds of our day, whether formed with a structure of secularism or cultural Christianity, that pressure is a bad thing.

that it is possible to live life and walk through the raindrops without getting wet. So as the cultural pressure increases against the church in our gray zone moment, and we find ourselves in a wilderness, those who turn to God, who choose not to run from the wilderness, who seek his presence in the wilderness, will be transformed with spiritual authority.

He continues, the root of our anxiety is our disconnection from God. This means we cannot be a non anxious presence without God’s presence. Jesus, I think, teaches us this, that in the midst of the storms of life, He is present and He often brings calm. And even when it feels like He doesn’t bring calm, He is still present.

He is still present. Matthew wants his first century followers to know that the God of this universe is still in control, even without Jesus present on this earth. And he wants us, as 21st century followers of Jesus, to know that this God of the universe is still the authority, still in control, still present.

When the storm is calmed, he is God. When the storm is not calmed, he is still God. When we get to the end of Matthew, Matthew is still talking about authority when he gives his disciples this remit to go to the rest of the world, he says, all authority in heaven on Earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age. Again, to a first century group of readers, he said, in the midst of what you are still doing, I am with you. In the midst of a world that feels like it’s against you, I am with you. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty and those moments where it feels like nobody’s in control, I am still with you.

I don’t know what life looks like for you right now, what it looks like today. Perhaps for some of you, it feels like you are in a boat and Jesus is asleep and it feels like it doesn’t matter how much you cry. The waves are still big and powerful, and the boat feels like at any moment it might tip over and Jesus won’t wake up.

I don’t know exactly what you’re feeling there. I don’t have an easy answer for it. I don’t know why sometimes he calms that storm, and sometimes he doesn’t.

In the midst of that storm, we have people here that would love to pray with you. To pray that God would calm the storm, yes. But to be with you in the midst of it, to pray with you, to care for you, to let you know that you are not alone, that you are loved. They would love to stand with you. They’ll be dotted around the sides.

There’s a prayer spot over the back. You can wait around till after the service if you’d rather have that. But wherever you are in that, however scary that storm feels like, God of the universe is still in control. Still the authority. Still able to bring calm to those waves. And then for the rest of us, in the midst of all of that, my question is, how is God transforming you in these storms?

How has he transformed you to do what he asked us to do, to give this remit to go to all of the world in the 21st century? In the midst of all our questions, in the midst of events like we watched yesterday, we’re told that he is still the authority in this world and he invested that in people like you and me.

And he says to us to go To those first century people if they said in the midst of your work, I am with you In the midst of your call to give yourselves to this world as he gave himself for this world. I am with you I am with you Sometimes I wonder whether we as a church across this nation lose sense of that imperative and so I think a question that Jesus has for us is Will you still do what I asked you to do?

Will you still follow me? Will you still go? Being a non anxious presence doesn’t mean being an uncaring presence, doesn’t mean not showing empathy. It does mean going though to those that are in the midst of storms and being alongside them. Sharing this Jesus, who is still in charge of this world, still the authority, still holds this world, holds the storms, holds you in the palm of his hand.

Aaron is going to sing a song over us, and then you have an invite to respond to.

Perhaps some questions you might ask yourself in the midst of that is, do I feel that imperative to go? Not to a different nation necessarily, but to the people around me. Who am I praying for in the midst of that? Who does God put on my heart that is far from Him? Maybe has been hurt, broken by the church.

Maybe feels angry at God right now. To who are you called to show the love of Jesus around you? Because that’s what we’re called to do. Jesus, thank you, God of the universe, that you not only taught with authority, but you healed the sick. You brought peace of mind to those that are far from peaceful. You calmed storms.

In the midst of our own storms. Would you bring healing? Would you bring new jobs? Would you bring new relationships? Would you bring healing from old ones? All of the ways that life feels like it’s beaten us up, would you work in us? Would you help us to follow you, to do what you ask, to go to the world?

Thank you, Jesus. Amen.