Jesus the Storm-Calmer

A Wonderful but Terrible World

Famously, Louis Armstrong's 1967 hit described our world as wonderful. And it is, especially on a day like today — you can really appreciate that. The things he points out in that song, right? He talks about nature being in full bloom. He talks about green trees and red roses, blue skies and white clouds. The beauty in the spectrum of the rainbow reflected in the beauty of the spectrum of ethnicities in this world. And when people shake hands, they're actually expressing love toward one another. When he hears a baby crying, it reminds him that this baby will one day grow and know much more than he was ever able to learn. There's beauty in this world — blooms and births, variety and community, growth and learning.

But of course, the song leaves much out. Sometimes the thorns on the rose prick you. Sometimes the blue skies give way to dark clouds. Sometimes handshakes are replaced with an exchange of gunfire. Sometimes the baby does not grow old. We can look at the world from a glass half full or a glass half empty perspective, right? Because there's beauty in it. But the beauty is marred.

God created the universe and he put our world into order, but the sin of man introduced disorder. So now we live in a world wonderfully made, but terribly broken. It's a beautiful world that's scarred by transgression, error, sin. Our world groans and waits for renewal. And God will renew it, because it's his — it is his. As we live in this wonderful but terrible world, it's unsettling just how quickly wonderful moments can give way to chaos. A lot of our efforts in this life are dedicated to resisting that chaos, right? Insurance, medicine, security systems, retirement accounts, locks, codes, plans, and backup plans. These are necessary things in a world that ultimately is not a safe world, as wonderfully as it has been made.

So to whom shall we turn? You all know the Sunday school answer, right? It's Jesus, of course. But here's what scripture presses, and I think particularly in our passage today: Jesus is the answer, but he's not the answer for simply individual instances of chaos. In other words, life is usually wonderful, but you're gonna experience moments of frustration — from circling a parking lot looking for a parking space to a certain diagnosis in an oncology ward, and everything in between. He's more than just the guy you call on in a moment of chaos. He's more than that.

We don't need a tool man that we call over every time we have something broken to deal with. We need someone with authority over the realities that drive all of the chaos to begin with — the things that break our world in the first place. We don't need patchwork and repairs. We need peace and restoration.

Thinking Bigger: Luke 8

I want you to turn to Luke 8. And I'm doing something a little ambitious this morning, because I'm covering what would normally be three sermons, right? Three episodes in the Gospel of Luke that each have way plenty of meat on the bone to be enough for a sermon on their own. But we're gonna do three in a row together, because I want you to see how the three episodes work together — sort of as a trio singing the same song, or three witnesses pointing to the same reality — that this God-man that we refer to as Jesus, this Messiah, the Christ that was promised in the Old Testament, he's more than a miracle worker.

He's more than someone who wows you with things he's done or is capable of doing. And he's more than a person that you call on in a moment of crisis. He's bigger than all of it, and he's over the things that produce the crises. So Luke is calling us to think bigger, to think bigger.

So we're gonna take this larger chunk. We're gonna go all the way through the end of the chapter from verse 22 — Luke 8, starting in verse 22. We'll take one episode at a time. The first episode demonstrates that Jesus is Lord over creation — the famous passage where he commands wind and rain and storm. So this is verses 22 to 25. It's a shorter one, but let's read it.

Episode One: Lord Over Creation

Isn't that the question we're confronted with? They're good calling him master — Rabbi, teacher. He has every right to sleep on the boat while the rest of them are managing the masts and the ropes and whatever they're doing. I don't know anything about maritime, whatever.

But they call on him in a way that makes him wake up and go, "Who do you think I am? Because your lack of faith betrays what you actually think of me. " And then they end with the question — they're expressing it themselves: "Who is this guy? " Who wakes up, first of all, from a nap through a storm where the boat is filling up with water — you understand, this is not like you're on a cruise and feeling a little seasick. They're dying. Who is this guy that wakes up and says "Stop it" to waves?

Think of a movie you've seen where there's some wave capsizing a boat. There's plenty of them to choose from. Your mind probably goes to some of those special effects that demonstrate the danger, the music is going, and everyone's gonna die. And Jesus just gets up and ends the movie, right? Just stop it — it's calm.

Who is this guy? Well, they woke him up for help, right? Hey, we're drowning, do something. Now, I don't know what they thought he was going to do, but it wasn't what he did. Had they woken him up going, "Lord, we know you can even command wind — would you stop this storm? " then he wouldn't have rebuked them. He would have been like, "Right on, man. That's exactly it. You are on it. " But he rebuked them, meaning they're not on it. So what did they wake him up for?

I don't know. I think the best guess, giving them the benefit of the doubt, is: we've been praying to God to calm the storm, but if he prays to God to calm the storm, at least his prayers are gonna be more effective than ours, because he's more special than us. Or maybe it was, "Grab a bucket — you're asleep, and we could use a hand, " or maybe something in between. But they didn't wake him up to calm the storm, because then they wouldn't have been rebuked. So they woke him up to solve something immediate, and instead he demonstrated something way beyond what they were thinking. They needed to think bigger.

And I think that's where this whole trio of episodes that we're looking at this morning is taking us. That's what they were failing to understand. And part of what they were failing to understand is what the storm was representing — and what I think Luke is doing with the storm as he fronts these three episodes with this story. Because the storm, I think, is not about trials in life. The storm is not immediately about hardships that we experience. The storm is about ultimate doom and judgment that faces every person who is not in Christ.

How do we know that? He doesn't say that. Well, Luke says it in other ways, right? Like this morning some of you were studying the Psalms and how they use metaphor and analogy. Luke — and not just Luke, but the scriptures — use deep water very intentionally. The deep waters before the first day of creation represented formlessness and emptiness, chaos and lack of life. There was an earth there, but there's no life, no form, no order to it.

He hasn't ordered it yet. Then of course you fast forward — man has introduced sin into the world. God created this order, and then man brings in disorder. The disorder gets so bad that God has to decreate things with a flood and start again with a new Adam in Noah, right? So the flood is the judgment that kind of returns the earth to pre-creation day one, and he starts again with a new Adam. So the water becomes this return of chaos in the form of judgment.

You remember in Exodus when Israel is going through the Red Sea — the Red Sea blocks their path, it's impossible to cross. God uses Moses to split the Red Sea. They walk across on dry land, untouched, not a drop. And then when the Egyptian army tries to go through, they're judged with the water.

You remember when Jonah disobeys God's order and boards a ship going the opposite direction of where God is calling him to go. The ship is breaking under a heavy storm because of Jonah's disobedience. And when the sailors are like, "Man, we're all gonna die, " they call on Jonah — kind of like these guys call on Jesus. "Hey man, wake up. Can you call on your God or something? " And Jonah's like, "Well, I'm actually the reason. I'm actually the reason why you guys are dying. If you throw me overboard, I'll take on the judgment myself, and you'll be spared. " They throw him overboard — "God, please don't hold this against us, throwing your prophet overboard" — and then Jonah takes on the judgment of the floodwaters alone. By him taking that judgment upon himself, the sailors are saved.

The difference here is that Jesus takes the judgment willingly — and not through disobedience, but through obedience. And not because he did something wrong, but because we did something wrong. Jonah repents, prays, God resurrects him, brings him out of the water, and then he goes and preaches so that others can be saved. And that's exactly how baptism works, right? Symbolically, you go down into the waters of death and judgment, and you come out alive via resurrection in Christ. That's why we do baptism with water. We could go on about this — there's a lot more — but especially those of you who were here for the sermon on Jesus' baptism, where we went into more detail, you get the picture.

Here's the reality: the storm in this episode is not a random analogy. It's not even just a really good analogy. It's a carefully chosen picture that stays in step with an overarching theme throughout the Bible — that God's judgment upon man for sin is the deep, chaotic water, and that the only way out of that storm, the only way out of that flood and that judgment of death, is Jesus the Messiah. That's it.

Given the floodwaters as judgment imagery, we can say that Jesus is Lord over creation, right — he commands the wind and the sea, he commands nature. But we can also say he's Lord over decreation. Because what scripture is pointing out is that this world shouldn't even be in order. The entire world should be swallowed up in storms and earthquakes and fires — that should be the norm, because that's what it's all heading toward. Not just the earth, but all of us. Humanity as disobedient Adam has judgment ahead of us.

This is the sobering truth that scripture communicates, but it communicates it with hope. Because there's one who can reverse the decreation that is ahead of us. There's one who can get us out of the judgment that is impending for man. There is one in whom there is hope — not to make your finances a little better or protect you from disease here and now, but as one who is over all of it, over the thing that produces all of that chaos in our lives. We need to think bigger about the problem we're facing so that we can appreciate just how big the Savior is who is saving us.

So this story sets up the rest of the chapter, and then Luke uses a couple of different episodes to get specific. What about decreation? Think of the worst thing. What's the worst thing about this world? Well, in our day, the first thing we might think about is diseases, or job loss, or financial hardships, or marital troubles. But for first-century believers, the first thing they might have thought of was to peel back the curtain and see that there are spiritual beings behind a lot of this mess — beings we might refer to as demons.

We've encountered them already in the Gospel of Luke, but now Luke is saying it's not just decreation in general that Jesus is saving us from. Even the agents of decreation — the demons themselves — have to obey him just like the winds obey him. And so as soon as they get to shore, he confronts a demon.

Episode Two: Lord Over the Demons

Remember, Jesus said, "Let's get in a boat and get to the other side. " They did get to the other side — and maybe that's part of what they weren't believing, that he was able to get them there. They did get there.

I'm just gonna pause and tell you: I don't have all the answers to all the questions that are gonna be flooding your mind as we read this. It's weird. I don't understand demons. They're real, they exist, and we get very little about them in scripture. But it's kind of crazy — some of the things we go, "Ah, that's the movies, that's Hollywood. " I don't know, they got it from somewhere. Some of this stuff, man.

He lives in a graveyard. Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind — and they were afraid. You would have been afraid of Legion. But it's so crazy that the legion is gone. To see this man — the guy everybody knew, the crazy dude, everybody walk away, he breaks chains, he runs into the desert, he lives among the tombs — to see him sane is fear-inducing. He's sitting at the feet of Jesus, not naked but clothed, not insane but in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the demon-possessed man had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear.

It's ironic — Jesus solves the haunt of the town, and they see him as the haunting presence who needs to get out. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him. He wants to join the group, man — wouldn't you? But Jesus sent him away, saying, "Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you. " And he went away proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.

I don't have time to unpack everything here because I do want to get to the next episode. But it's interesting that the demons ask Jesus not to torment them by sending them to the abyss. I don't know where the abyss is. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know what it feels like. I know it's not great. I know demons don't want to be there.

We get hints in other places in scripture. In Revelation 9, John describes a bottomless pit from which demonic entities arise to torment people on the earth. In Revelation 20, a bottomless pit is where the serpent — the devil — is confined, to constrain and limit him, to keep him from deceiving nations wholesale. So there is a dark place, a deep expanse, an abysmal pit where demons are held, imprisoned, and thereby limited in how they can interact with humanity. That's where they don't want to go. It's a holding place — not their final place of destruction that Revelation also talks about, but like a prison from which they can only exit with the Lord's permission.

As we read through Luke, it seems that as Jesus begins his public ministry, there are demon possessions all over the place — we've seen this several times already. But now as Jesus comes on the scene, he's expelling them left and right. And in this instance, these demons knew he was going to confine them to this holding place, this prison, and they don't want to go there.

Notice that Jesus permits this army — they call themselves Legion, because a legion would be thousands of troops in a Roman army. I don't know if that's a deceitful tactic to make themselves sound bigger, but I think they're speaking truth to this holy Son of God. He permits this legion, this army of demons, to enter the pigs. And by doing so, he sends them to an abyss that is the lake — this great body of water where the demons send the pigs to drown.

So why would the demons do this? This is the piece I'm centering on, because we're sticking with the theme set up by the capsizing boat and Jesus calming the storm.

I don't think the demons were asking permission to enter the pigs because demons need a host to survive. Some people have extrapolated that without a host, demons are kind of hurting or dying. I don't think that's it — because why would they destroy the pigs? They have a new host, and their first thing to do is destroy the host. Now where are they? They're not in the abyss — they're roaming around for something else to affect, I would assume. The text doesn't quite tell us that. I don't think they're looking for a host because without one they die or they're hurt. I think they're basically asking: "Don't put us someplace where we're confined and can't destroy anything. At least let us destroy something. How about these dirty pigs that are unclean to Jews anyway? We want to destroy something of your creation. " And by granting permission, Jesus is not setting the demons up to drown — he's setting up the pigs. He knows they want to destroy the pigs, and he lets them. It doesn't tell us why. He just does.

What did the demons do? They couldn't send the man they were possessing to his death, so they sent the pigs to their deaths by drowning them in a great body of water. What Jesus protected the disciples from on the boat now becomes the demise of the pigs — and the demons took them there.

I think that's their goal. Demons want to influence, they want to block the gospel. We already see the devil snatching seed that is sown on certain kinds of soil. They want to deafen ears, blind eyes. They want to lure, tempt, convince — so that people are corrupted and ultimately headed toward destruction. This is why the man hung out among the tombs. He's around death, because that's where demons want us. Demons are agents of death, because death is the ultimate end of decreation. That's where it's all going. But they can only go so far as the Lord lets them.

We would be remiss to think the influence of demons is now gone. Limited, yes. Fewer possessions, I would probably grant that — it seems to be that way, at least where we are. But that doesn't mean they're non-existent. The goal is the same. And so if you come to church and hear a sermon and you're like, "Huh, that's convicting" — but by Monday it's out of your mind, they did their job. Why would they possess you? They already snatched the seed, right? Of course they're active.

And the more you ignore gospel truths, the more it ruins your life. The more it unravels your marriage. The more it hurts the relationship with your kids. The more it consumes you from the inside out. Their path of destruction is successful when that happens.

So Jesus is Lord over decreation, and the first example Luke gives us is that he's Lord even over the agents of decreation — the demons who want us all to go down in death. And then Luke moves to another episode where he demonstrates that Jesus is Lord over the ultimate end of decreation, which is death itself. Where the demons want to take us, where the storm would have taken us, where the lake took the pigs, what the tombs represent — Jesus is even Lord over death itself.

Episode Three: Lord Over Death

Look at this in verses 40 through 56. As a heads up, we get a two-for-one here. It starts with one episode, then there's an interruption — a middle piece — and then it goes back to the beginning of the episode. We've talked about sandwiches before, right? Bread, meat in the middle, then bread. That's what's happening here, but it all works together.

Just a quick aside — I think it's interesting that she wants to remain hidden. I mean, wouldn't you? A broken arm, sure. A dying daughter, yes. But her particular issue — it's not one you'd want to announce in front of everybody. But Jesus kind of makes her say it. Not to embarrass her, but so that the people understand what just happened to her. And then in verse 48, he publicly proclaims that her faith has made her well.

So here you have an episode within an episode. You have a synagogue ruler whose daughter is dying, and a woman with a hemorrhage who has spent every last penny on physicians who could not help her. As long as this child has been alive — twelve years — this woman has been going to doctors for help with this problem, and it has not been solved.

The synagogue ruler isn't just allowed into the synagogue — he runs it. But what happens with somebody who is unclean due to blood? They're not allowed in the synagogue. They're not even allowed to be touched by anybody, because then that person has to go get cleansed.

So you have the most in person and the most out person, and then the great equalizer between the two is life leaving them. Throughout the Old Testament, as we've seen in other sermons, life is represented in the blood — that's why God makes such a big deal out of blood and sacrifice, and whether it makes you unclean, how to handle it, not to eat it or drink it. Those things represent life. And life is pouring out of the daughter, who is twelve years old, and life through the blood is pouring out of this woman for twelve years.

They're different, but the same. Because the great equalizer is death. Status doesn't matter when death comes knocking, right? It doesn't matter who you're from or where you're from or what your status has been in the past. This is Jesus demonstrating his power over disease and even death itself, and faith is the key issue. Verses 48 going into 49 — there it is.

"Your faith has made you well. Go in peace. " And while he was still speaking, "Do not fear, only believe, and she will be well. " That's the verb form of faith. Go back to the disciples on the boat. They had some kind of faith. But they didn't have the faith that says: this is the decreation solution, man. He doesn't have tricks up his sleeve. He doesn't have things to offer us to make life a little bit better. He is over life and death itself.

He is the solution for the big problem — capital P — which is decreation and the judgment that is due to us because of our sin. So when he calls the disciples to faith, and he calls the father to faith, when he commends the woman for her faith, he's pointing to believing in him in a certain way. Not that he exists — the demons do that too. Taking these episodes together, and in the context of the whole gospel, the point isn't to believe that Jesus is a miracle worker.

How? Because he takes the judgment upon himself. Judgment can't simply be erased — that would be merciful, but it wouldn't be just. If God erased the judgment that's due to you, he would be merciful but not just. But by Jesus taking the punishment upon himself, that is both just and merciful at the same time.

And that's why I think he charged them not to tell anyone about the resurrection of the girl. He's biding his time to make it to the cross. He doesn't want popularity. He needs to get the job done — which is to take the storm upon himself. Take the death upon himself. Take the disease upon himself.

Applying This to Our Lives