Sermon Bible Commentary
Mark 4:38
I. Look at the illustrious sleeper. The greatest of all slept. Thus was He in all points like unto His brethren; the substance of His body was wasted and was repaired, renewed and restored by food; the brain and nerves were exhausted, and their power was renewed by sleep. A morbid piety and a false morality find virtue in wakefulness, when nature preaches forgetfulness and demands repose. Religion is rather in going to sleep when Nature has need of slumber, than in a forced watchfulness for its sake. Doubtless, Christ was often weary, and now we see Him at rest. He sleeps after the hard work of a very busy day. To cease from labour is as much a duty as to work; rest is pure and holy and good, when in season. To everything there is a season and a time, for every purpose under heaven there is a time to rest. He who, in his working, works the work of God, and does God's will instead of his own, will see the season for rest, and will have the hour for rest.
II. This sleep of Jesus, the Man and the Christ of God, in the storm, was natural, and not in any sense forced or artificial; but it presents two things first, the complete exhaustion of the body of Jesus, and secondly, the sweet and perfect peace of His spirit. Safe from evil and from every fear, He must live until of His work it could be said, "It is done." He will die, but not now; He will be killed, but not by the storm; He will go to the grave, but will not find His tomb in the depths of the sea. In the fulness of time He will die, and by means fixed in the foreknowledge, and predetermined in the counsel of God. Until that day He will deliver Him from all evil God will guard His soul. He was in the hinder part of the ship asleep.
III. In the case before us, the disciples were awake, the Master was sleeping. Now, the Master sleeps not, slumbers not, and the disciples may, in season, safely, quietly, peacefully sleep. Let Christ be with you always, with you everywhere with you at all times, with you in all circumstances. Seek to be conscious of His presence, and you will not only be safe, but you will feel blessed.
S. Martin, Penny Pulpit(New series), No. 389.
The Sympathy of God and Necessity of Man.
I. It cannot be denied that there are many facts and many experiences in the life of this world, which irresistibly suggest the question whether God can be waking, or if wakeful, caring. To try to enumerate such phenomena is as needless as it would be painful. We cannot but read this sleep of Jesus Christ in the boat, tossed by the waves, with His disciples standing by, wondering and half murmuring, as intended to represent the world-wide, age-long mystery to which we are pointing.
II. The sympathy of God is more vital to us even than His omnipotence. The disciples accepted the perishing in other words, the non-intervention of Christ to save what they could not accept was His not caring. In its influence upon the heart, to care is more than to save. Love is more than power, even in the Divine. Far better would it be for us, as spiritual and immortal beings, to imagine that there might be some opposing and thwarting impediment in the way of the present exercise of God's attribute of omnipotence, than that there should be any defect or any coldness in His love. And when a man has made up his mind at all costs to believe in the Divine care for him, he will find, as he casts himself day by day upon that love and that compassion that, for him at all events, however it may be for the universe, the power is already sufficient too. Beginning with the axiom, "Thou, God, carest," he passes on into the experimental conviction, "There is none like unto Thee, O Lord, there is not one that can do as Thou doest."
III. "Carest thou not?" has a voice for the disciple as well as for the Master. It reproves the lazy loitering, the purposeless sauntering, the silly dreaming, in which so many of us pilgrims and voyagers pass this responsible, this anxious lifetime. Not to care that we perish is suicide; not to care that our brother perishes is murder. Christ cared, God cared, that we might care; and yet, as I look within, as I look around me, I find almost nothing that expresses, almost nothing that is consistent with this anxiety. I see lives given to this one thing, the making themselves easy, soft and luxurious. "Give me one serious man" was the French statesman's challenge. "Give me one," we will echo it, "who cares if he himself, cares if his brother perishes."
C. J. Vaughan, University Sermons,p. 305.
References: Mark 4:38. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xix., No. 1121.Mark 4:39. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,10th series, p. 77. Mark 4:39; Mark 4:40. J. H. Thom, Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ,p. 47. Mark 4:40; Mark 4:41. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xii., p. 138.