Chapter # 4 Paragraph # 9 Study # 4
August 11, 2020
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
(180)
NASB
38 Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke Him and said to Him, "Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?"
39 And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Hush, be still." And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm.
40 And He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?"
41 They became very much afraid and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?"
- I. Jesus and The Disciples: A Study of Contrasts.
- A. There are, apparently, no Greek texts that have the name "Jesus" in this verse.
- 1. The Greek texts are in agreement that "autos" is the actual Greek content. "autos" is a personal masculine pronoun, and there is no doubt that it refers to "Jesus".
- 2. The "problem" is not that there is no "Jesus" in the original text; it is the fact that the translators feel free to depart from the text they are supposed to be translating on, apparently, the "assumption" that the reader cannot follow the text. This is intellectual arrogance; on what basis do the translators assume that their readers cannot read well enough to know that Jesus is the "autos" to which the text refers?
- B. Actually the "autos" is better for the absence of "Jesus" than it would be for its presence in that it doubles down on the emphasis that exists. The name, "Jesus", was last used by Mark in 3:7. The "autos" was last used by Mark in reference to Jesus in 3:13. The "autos" in Mark's use is deliberately emphatic (just as "Jesus, Himself... " would be) but Mark's use in our text is actually undermined by the translators' insertion of the Name.
- C. He was in the stern upon the pillow sleeping.
- 1. The main verb is "was" (Imperfect Indicative) and it is attended by the Present Participle "sleeping".
- a. Mark's first use of this participle is in 4:27 where the one who had "cast a sowing" was described as "he should be sleeping and awakening night and day" while the seed and the earth combined to produce the coming harvest. This is deliberate: He was doing the very thing He had said would be done with the harvest on its way. His was an intentional disconnect from the process: the seed had been sown upon the good earth and there was no more He needed to do in regard to the harvest to come.
- b. His third use is in the same general context: 5:39. In this text Jesus tells the assembled group that the child was not dead, but sleeping. The child was dead and the people knew it. But Jesus was making a distinction between what was to be expected: death created an expectation of no further relational interaction between her and her parents, friends, etc.; but sleep creates another expectation of only a temporary suspension of those relationships. And Jesus was extending a "rope" to the people so that those who were determined to disbelieve in His identity could "hang themselves" by accepting His "the child is only sleeping" as an excuse to reject Him. Faith is the critical necessity for pleasing God and using "valid" excuses to "disbelieve" angers Him. Unbelief is nothing more than the expression of a solid determination to cling to one's own "self-determination" as rebellion against the High King of Heaven. It is to be despicable in the eyes of "disciples".
- c. His fourth use is in 13:36 where "sleeping" is absolutely unacceptable in the light of the insistence upon "being alert".
- d. The final uses are collected around the potential danger of "coming into temptation" in 14:37, 40, and 41. The fact of this record is that the disciples, especially Peter, paid no attention to the warning. Peter later said, "I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul" (1 Peter 2:11) as a warning to others to learn from his own grievous error.
- e. All in all, then, "sleeping" means "ignoring the implied processes and results"; a good thing when "ignoring" is a matter of "faith" and a grievous evil when "ignoring" is a matter of "fleshly unbelief".
- 2. There are two attendant particulars.
- a. He was in the stern.
- 1) This is Mark's only reference to the stern of a boat.
- 2) In this context, the "stern" was the part of the boat that was furthermost from the waves breaking over the boat because the disciples would have naturally turned the bow into the wind and waves in an effort to keep from being swamped. Thus, Jesus was the furthermost removed from the splashing waters and growing danger.
- b. He was upon the pillow.
- 1) Mark is the only writer of the New Testament who used this term, and he did it only once.
- 2) He was clearly describing Jesus as "comfortable"; the only one "comfortable" under the present circumstances. He was the One Who had cast the sowing and needed to do nothing further. This is the epitome of the "faith" about which He chided the disciples in their panic of false values and beliefs.
- D. The disciples, on the other hand... .
- 1. "Raised Him" (translated "woke Him"); another link to 4:27. The sower did have some other things to do around the farm when it was "day". In this metaphorical analogy, Jesus did need to address the failure of faith that had occurred and was occurring.
- 2. "They are saying (as dogmatic doctrine) to Him: "Teacher, is it not a care to you that we are being destroyed?"
- a. The panic produced a false view of Jesus.
- 1) Mark's use of "teacher" is uniformly in contexts of "formal recognition, but relationally distant" (there are 12 such in Mark's record).
- 2) Mark's use of "care" is limited to two texts/contexts and both of them give the idea of "the ice queen"; a person completely unaffected emotionally by the struggles of others (4:38 and 12:14).
- b. It also produced a false view of the circumstances.
- 1) They "are saying" means this is their view of reality.
- 2) "We are being destroyed" means they are no longer "whole".
- c. And it revealed the falseness of their "love" as "loyalty" to The God and to The Kingdom of The God.
