In Mark 4, Jesus sets out with His disciples on the Sea of Galilee. He falls asleep in the storm and they’re scared. They actually ask Him, “Don’t you care?” Imagine that? Asking the Son of God if He cares. He stands up and speaks and the storm is calmed. “Why were you afraid?” He asks. And in Mark 4:41, after Jesus calms the wind and sea, the disciples are actually more afraid than they were during the storm:
"And they became very much afraid and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?'"
The storm threatened their lives. But the realization that they were sharing a boat with One who commands creation itself shook them to the core.
This pattern occurs throughout Scripture. People often think that if God visibly appeared, the dominant response would be comfort. Yet the biblical record repeatedly shows that a direct encounter with God's holiness, majesty, or power produces fear, awe, and sometimes terror.
In Isaiah 6, the prophet sees the Lord seated on His throne while seraphim cry, "Holy, Holy, Holy."
Isaiah's reaction is not excitement but dread: "Woe is me, for I am ruined!"
Confronted with God's holiness, Isaiah immediately becomes aware of his own sinfulness.
When God speaks from the bush, Moses responds with reverence and fear: "Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God."
Even before receiving his commission, Moses understands that he stands on holy ground.
When God descends on Sinai with thunder, lightning, fire, smoke, and trumpet blasts, the people are terrified.
They tell Moses: "Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die."
The people recognize that they are encountering the living God, not merely witnessing a spectacular event.
In Daniel 10, Daniel sees a glorious heavenly being.
His strength disappears: "No strength was left in me, for my natural color turned to a deathly pallor."
He falls trembling and must be strengthened before he can stand.
This is especially similar to Mark 4. After Jesus fills the nets in Luke 5, Peter does not celebrate the fishing success. Instead: "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!"
Peter realizes that he is standing before someone far greater than a prophet or rabbi.
At the Transfiguration when Jesus' glory is unveiled and the Father's voice speaks from heaven: "They fell face down to the ground and were terrified."
The revelation of Christ's true majesty produces fear.
The resurrection narratives repeatedly combine joy and fear.
Mark says the women fled the tomb trembling and astonished. The angelic announcement was good news, but the encounter was overwhelming.
In Revelation 1, John sees the glorified Christ.
This is the same John who reclined next to Jesus at the Last Supper. Yet when he sees Christ in unveiled glory: "When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man."
Even intimate familiarity with Jesus does not remove the impact of seeing His glory revealed.
What is fascinating is that the fear is rarely the fear of impending judgment alone. It is often the fear that comes from suddenly realizing who is present.
R.C. Sproul used to distinguish between being afraid of something dangerous and being overwhelmed by something infinitely greater than yourself. Scripture portrays God as both loving and approachable, yet also utterly transcendent and holy.
The disciples in Mark 4 illustrate this perfectly. During the storm, they feared the power of nature. After the storm, they feared the One who controlled nature. The sea was dangerous. Jesus was sovereign.
That is why the text says they were "very afraid." The storm raised the question, "Will we survive?" The miracle raised the deeper question, "Who is this?"
And that question echoes throughout Scripture. The closer people come to a genuine revelation of God, the more they are overwhelmed by His holiness, majesty, power, and otherness. Fear is not the opposite of faith here. Rather, it is often the beginning of true worship.
In fact, the progression in Mark 4 is almost a miniature picture of discipleship: first we fear our circumstances, then we discover that the One in the boat is far more powerful than the circumstances, and finally we are left in awe of Him. That deeper fear of the Lord gradually displaces our fear of everything else.
3 comments:
There's a story about ex PCUSA pastor John Shuck who said that if Jesus appeared right in front of him and told him that homosexuality was a sin, that he would tell Jesus the he wasn't interested in Him. That so many people simply assume that they would get in Jesus' face and set Him straight, when the witness of Scripture tells us otherwise, seems crazy to me.
It always confounds me when I hear people suggest that when they get to heaven they're going to ask God why He did this or didn't do that. Clearly you have know clue who you're going to be speaking to. I think of Gandalf or Aslan, kind and caring in one moment, and utterly terrifying by their power in the next. I'm sure the disciples had to change their shorts after Jesus calmed the storm. We have this view of Jesus as meek and mild, and the God of the Old Testament as wrathful and angry. What a sad, false view of both. But as we talked about yesterday, we bring our presuppositions to Scripture and simply block out anything that disagrees with our original belief.
I think we finite mortals--especially the godless--have no real comprehension of the transcendence and unfathomable otherness of God. No one will have the arrogant response that Craig relates when he/she is face-to-face with King Jesus; instead, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess Him as Lord (Isa 45:23, Rom 14:11, Phil 2:10-11). Even those with no fear of God in them now will learn that while there are fearsome things about life in the here and now, there is a more serious reckoning coming--one that will level each and every one of us, whether haughty or humble.
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