Chapter # 4 Paragraph # 9 Study # 5
August 18, 2020
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
(182)
NASB
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' Response To The Panic Of The Disciples.
- A. The verb translated "He got up" is an intensified form of verse 38's "they woke Him".
- 1. The basic verb does not mean "they woke".
- a. This verb is used by Mark to mean "to rise" (from a prone position; from the dead; from a tolerant attitude to a war like attitude; from silence to being a 'prophetic' voice; etc.).
- b. In 4:38 the disciples went to the sleeping Jesus and pulled Him to an upright position on the cushion upon which He had been sleeping. That He "awoke" was the consequence of their pulling Him upright, but it doesn't mean "they woke Him"; it means "they pulled Him upright".
- 2. The intensified form of this verb does not, in this case, mean "He got up".
- a. Mark only used this intensified form this one time and he used it in the form of an Aorist, Passive Voice, Participle. It should have been translated "when He was completely raised up" and signifies that the disciples actively pulled Him erect upon His feet. The sense is that Jesus had been deeply asleep (how else would He have been asleep in the midst of such a storm?) and was groggy when they initially pulled him to a sitting position, so they pulled Him to His feet (because it is very likely that He reached out for hands to pull Him up out of His grogginess).
- b. That "He got up" is, in terms of result, what Mark meant (Jesus was standing as He rebuked the storm), but it is not what he wrote because he wanted his readers to see the process driven by panic stricken "disciples".
- B. The verb translated "rebuked" is the typically translated "rebuke" (with 'sternly telling' or 'warning' as lesser often chosen terms).
- 1. The word's meaning is seen by way of illustration in 1:25 when Jesus "rebuked" the unclean spirit so that he had to quit speaking and come out of its "victim/host". It typically means "to tell someone/something to stop whatever action he/it is taking, or considering taking, and do something distinctly different".
- 2. In this text, it was the "wind" that was "rebuked". It was blowing up massive waves and causing a threat to the lives of those in the boat, and Jesus told it to stop doing that. In five of Mark's six uses of "wind" in his Gospel, the "wind" is oppositional and, to some degree, even dangerous for what it is doing. In the last use (13:27), it is presented as the cause of scattering the elect "from the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of heaven" (an obvious metaphor).
- C. Jesus, then, "said to the sea...".
- 1. The wind, having been 'rebuked', ceased to blow so fiercely.
- 2. But the waves were already in intense movement with dire possibilities of impact.
- 3. So Jesus spoke to them: Be silent (typically, "stop making the noise"; note Psalm 124:5) and Be Muzzled.
- a. The word "be silent" is used by Mark in five texts, four of which are situations where the issue is "do not speak", or "they refused to speak". This fifth use in our text is a metaphor of the waves' threatening behavior, not their "noise"/"speech". Waves are typically silent unless they are so driven that they fall over upon themselves in whitecaps and sound. These were "driven" by a fierce gale.
- b. "Be muzzled" is an imperative in the passive voice: Mark only used it in one other place (1:25) when an unclean spirit interrupted Jesus' speech so that Jesus demanded silence from it. Its most literal meaning is illustrated in 1 Timothy 5:18 where there is a requirement to not put a muzzle on an ox when it is working, treading the grain, to keep it from eating while it is working. It this case, the issue is not "sound"; it is "eating". Most of the seven uses of this word in the New Testament have the noise of speech in mind.
- D. Thus, the wind "died down" (as if it suddenly became "weary" of blowing); a verb used only three times in the entire New Testament; and there "became" a great calm.
- E. And Jesus said to "them"...
- 1. Why are you "fearful"/"cowardly"?
- a. The question is made by the use of an adjective that is only used in three places in the New Testament.
- b. According to Matthew 8:26, Jesus asked this question twice because in that record He asked it before He was raised to His feet and our text says He asked it after He had calmed the storm.
- c. The word is not 'weak'; the translators of Revelation 21:8 translate it "cowardly". According to An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, it means (of persons) "cowardly, craven", or (of things) "miserable, wretched". It most likely, then, means "so fearful as to be unable to face the circumstances without being, as our text says, "...we are about to be destroyed and face that issue with no one to 'care'...". Wretched, indeed. Emotionally pressed right up to the very limit of one's tolerance.
- 2. Do you not yet have "faith"?
- a. The issue is that Jesus has been working to impart to them "faith". This was the immediate necessity of His original promise to them that He would make of them "fishers of men". He had promised them a "transformation" and such a promise required "faith" for it to be fulfilled. His question is this: "Do you not yet have faith?"
- b. The question is legitimate in that He had made a deliberate promise and it had not yet been fulfilled in their case. Abraham was promised a son and then went to Egypt in unbelief and there lied about the relationship he had to Sarah because of "fear"; this was illegitimate as long as Sarah was not pregnant. Promises made are to be "believed", but "faith" is a "developed attitude".
- II. The Disciples' Reaction To Jesus.
- A. They were made to fear (a passive, indicative, aorist) a great fear. What Jesus did pushed the limits of their comprehension of Him as the One with Whom they had to deal. This was a critical problem because no comprehension = no faith.
- 1. It was not a comfortable situation, emotionally, because there is no comfort in terror.
- 2. It was a necessary situation because "faith" has to come into being for comfort to have any place in our feelings of life. His greater promise (Eternal Life) requires Him to take whatever steps He must take for our comfort to become a real experience.
- B. The focus of their reaction is upon "Who is this One?".
- 1. Their experience was of the wind and the sea "placing themselves under His heard words"; i.e. they did what He demanded.
- 2. Anyone Who can make such demands and have them "heard" is to be considered as to His identity.
