Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1121
“Master, care You not that we perish?” Mark 4:38.
THE day had been a very illustrious one. Our Lord had remarkably displayed His teaching and healing powers. Great crowds had been attracted and He had both delivered to them most precious parables and worked among them most marvelous cures. Grand as the day was, it could not come to a close without a storm. After the same manner you will find it in the history of the Church of God, that intermingled with great successes will be great afflictions. Pentecost is followed by persecution—Peter’s sermon by Peter’s imprisonment. Though today a Church may flourish abundantly, in a very short time it may be visited with stern adversities. It may be tried, none the less, but all the more, because God is in its midst and is blessing it.
When our Lord took ship the weather appears to have been very fair and many little boats which scarcely would have tempted the sea had its surface been ruffled, put out upon the lake under the convoy of the great Teacher’s vessel. His was the admiral’s flag ship and they were the happy fleet. They made a gay flotilla sailing softly like sea birds when the ocean is in a gentle mood. All hearts were happy, all spirits were serene and the sleep of the disaster was but a type of the general peace. Nature reposed. The lake was as a molten looking glass, everything was quiet. And yet all of a sudden, as is the custom with these deep-lying inland seas, the Storm-Fiend rushed from his haunt among the mountains, sweeping everything before it. The little vessel was hard put to it, she was well-near filled with water and ready to sink through the force of the driving hurricane.
Thus may our loveliest calms be succeeded by overwhelming storms. A Christian man is seldom long at ease. Our life, like April weather, is made up of sunshine and showers—
“We should suspect some danger near When we perceive too much delight.” Nothing beneath the moon can be depended upon. All things are invariably variable. “Boast not yourself of tomorrow,” says the wise man. And he might have added, “Boast not yourself of today, for you know not how the evening may close, however brightly the morning may have opened.” Let us learn this lesson at the outset. Let us not reckon upon the continuance of present ease, nor fix our happiness upon the fickle weather of this world. Let us be ready for changes, so that, come when they may, we shall not be afraid of evil tidings—our heart being fixed—trusting in the Lord.
It would seem that when the storm began the disciples did not at first arouse the Master. They had some consideration for His extreme weariness, for He had spent the whole day in very severe toil and His human strength was exhausted. They thought, perhaps, that the hurry-burly of the storm would wake Him. How could He sleep amid the howling winds and roaring waves? They little knew how deeply calm His heart was, so that amid the tempest He could sleep right well, for the tempest came not near His soul. When at last they found that they were in great jeopardy, for their boat would surely sink, they began to judge their Lord and to think of Him unbelievingly and unkindly. They thought they should perish and they wondered how He could allow them to do so.
Therefore they went to Him, crying, as Luke says, “Master, Master, we perish!” Or as Mark gives it, “Master, care You not that we perish?” Many of them cried out. One said one thing and one another, but their general spirit was one of complaint to their Lord. They knew He loved them and yet half-thought Him cruel. They trusted Him and yet had grievous doubts. They called Him Master and yet they were in a sort of semi-rebellion against Him. They owned His sway, but were ready to mutiny against Him because He did not exercise His power for their rescue.
We shall take the text as the keynote of our subject. And first we shall think upon the apparent indifference of the Lord to His people. But we shall note, secondly, that it is only apparent. Thirdly, that He has a real care for them at times when He seems indifferent. And, fourthly, they shall see this to be the case by-and-by.
I. First, then, we, as well as the disciples on the Galilean lake, sometimes complain of THE INDIFFERENCE OF THE LORD TO US. It is but an apparent indifference. Sometimes the complaint takes this shape. God suffers natural laws to proceed in their prescribed course, even when His own children will be crushed by them. There is a vessel out at sea. It is enveloped in dense fog. Prayers are offered up by godly men on board for the right guidance of the vessel, but if it continue to be steered as it now is, it will come upon a rock and on a rock it does come, notwithstanding the prayers. Does not God care that a vessel should perish with people on board it who pray for direction and deliverance?
Our dear one, whom Jesus loves, is sick. Day and night we plead for his recovery, but the fever takes its course, or the broken limb requires its full time to heal. God does not alter the physical laws of the body for the convenience of His chosen. To them poison is poison and disease is disease. Full often the Lord permits those whom we love to suffer long and He does not seem to pay attention to our prayers and entreaties. No, rather the case grows worse and worse. We are very apt, when we are under a trying dispensation, to judge the laws of Nature to be very pitiless ordinances without hearts of mercy, and we say, “Master, care You not that we perish?” It is well to remember, however, what we may all too easily forget that the present complaint is based upon an error, for the laws of Nature do nothing whatever and are no more to be blamed than the Commandments on the Church wall.