DEVOTIONAL: Jesus in the boat

“He’s out on the boat!” the wife says to people who have phoned, asking for her husband. “They’re out on the boat!” the mom says to her kids’ friends who have called. The summertime is when boats are taken out of yards and placed onto the water.

I love to be out on the boat. I sail a sailboat, and really enjoy taking family and friends out for a sail on Lake Thunderbird. Water, wind and wave! People through all ages have found refreshment in that combination.

Jesus was often “out on the boat.” In the Gospel lesson this weekend, for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, we read in Mark 4:35-41 that Jesus and his disciples were going over to the other side of the Lake of Galilee in a boat. A furious squall came up and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped.

Several of his disciples were fishermen, men of the sea. They were terrified and afraid of drowning. To their astonishment they find Jesus in the stern, sleeping on a cushion! They woke him and exclaimed, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. There were other boats with them out on the lake whose occupants also witnessed this miracle.

Jesus turned to his disciples and said, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” The apostles had seen the other healing miracles which Jesus had done. Christ wondered why they feared for their lives. Did they think he would have let them all drown?

The disciples were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” No mere man could do such things! Who were they to even be in his presence?!

They would later also be witnesses to his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. The book of Acts in the New Testament is one their testimonies to Jesus of Nazareth. He is proclaimed the true Lord and Christ, in whom there is forgiveness of sins and eternal life, through faith in his name.

So the question to modern man is the same one the apostles faced. “This man out on the boat, who is this?” A mere man or God in human flesh come down among us?

Scripture, in its historical accounts, reveals that Jesus is true God and true Man in one Person!