Do You Even Care?

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Well, I think we all have times in our lives where we wonder if anybody cares, or we may even go so far as to feel like nobody cares. And sometimes we feel that way in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Our feelings may lie to us and tell us, well, you know, nobody cares about you.

I’ve experienced some of those times. Some of you all know that we’re expecting a baby in January, Carly Jo, and she’ll be number four that we’ve got running around. But many of you know that she would actually be number seven for me if they had all made it.

We’ve experienced two miscarriages and a stillbirth. And each of those were rough, especially the stillbirth, because he was stillborn at the same number of weeks that Benjamin was actually born. I mean, he would have been viable outside the womb if they had just taken him.

And I remember that being one of the lowest points of my entire life. And I knew that people cared. I was blessed in each of those circumstances to be surrounded by family and to be surrounded by church family who cared.

There was no question that people cared. And yet I remember one day walking into church shortly after that happened and a lady looking at me and one of the older ladies at church and her saying, it’s all right, you can always have another one. And that hurt almost as bad as the actual stillbirth, because I thought they’re not interchangeable.

And I thought that was such a horrible thing to say. And by the way, just as an aside, I learned right then and there that the tendency we all have to want to say something to make people feel better, we have to come up with the magic words that are going to make everything all right for them. No, you don’t.

because sometimes if you can’t think of anything to say and so you’re just having to think of something, it’s better to just not say anything and just be there to comfort people. And so I learned that there. Sometimes trying harder to make things better makes things worse.

But she said, you know, you can always have another one. And I really didn’t like hearing that. And I was polite and I smiled, but I told my mother afterwards, after I walked away and went to sit down in the pew, I said, I’ve never wanted to hit a woman in the face at church before.

And I never would, but I will admit that it just hurt that much. And in that moment, I thought, nobody even really cares. Nobody even understands what we’re going through.

Nobody cares, despite all the evidence to the contrary, despite all the other things that had been said. And honestly, now that I look back on it, I can think she said that because she was trying to think of something to make us feel better. She cared.

She just didn’t understand what she was saying. But in that moment, despite all the ways that people had shown us they cared, in that moment, I just knew that I had been hurt all over again. It’s like the bandage had been ripped off.

And in that moment, my feelings told me nobody cares. And I think we all have those moments where despite every other bit of evidence to the contrary, our feelings tell us nobody cares. Sometimes we can even feel that way toward God and feel like God doesn’t care.

Sometimes we can end up with the question, God, do you even care about me? We can get so beaten down by our circumstances, by the things that are going on in our lives and think that if God really cared about us, this wouldn’t be happening. And we can end up having that conversation with God, do you even care?

And if you’ve ever had that conversation with God in your prayer life, if you’ve ever said those words out loud to God, do you even care about me? I can tell you this morning, I’m not going to beat you up for that. That’s not the purpose of this message.

But the purpose is to tell you you’re not alone. That others have asked God that same question. Others in the scriptures asked God that same question, do you even care about me?

And we can see it, if you’ll turn with me to Mark chapter 4, we can see one instance where this happened, where people said, do you even care? They looked right at Jesus and said, do you even care? Despite all the evidence to the contrary, They had to ask, do you even care?

We’ll look at that and we’ll see what Jesus had to say as his answer. And we’re going to start this morning in verse 35 of Mark chapter 4. Mark chapter 4, second book of the New Testament, right after Matthew, right before Luke, about two-thirds of the way through your Bible.

Mark chapter 4, starting in verse 35, and it says, The same day when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side. And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship, and there were also with him other little ships. And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship so that it was now full.

Okay, we’re going to stop there for just a minute. What’s happening at the beginning of this passage is that Jesus has just spent a long day teaching the crowds. He’s at a point in his ministry where people are excited to hear what he’s got to say.

That’s not always the case, as we know, toward the end of his ministry. But things are still going good, still going well at this point. And so the crowds are coming.

They want to hear what Jesus is going to say. Maybe they want to see miracles. Maybe they want to get fed in some miraculous way.

Maybe they just want to hear something new. And so the crowds would show up, and they would surround Jesus. They would mob him.

And he would teach them. And he’s been standing out beside the seashore teaching them. And I’ve seen where people have talked about how sometimes the shores, the seashore, the curve of it would make like a natural amphitheater and amplify his voice where you could hear it for, you know, where hundreds of people could hear him.

And that may be the reason why he was teaching them beside the seashore. That or that’s just where they caught up with him. But he’s been out there teaching all these people and it’s been a long day.

And he needed some time away from the crowd. I mean, we forget about this because he’s God, but he’s also man at the same time. And don’t you just need time away from people?

Anybody else? Okay, just leave me alone for a few minutes. And so he needed to get away from the people.

He needed some time. He needed some time to regroup, to rest, to recharge. And so he sent them away.

And I guess to make sure they didn’t follow him, he and his disciples went on a boat. It says it was a ship. They went on board a ship so that they could cross over the Sea of Galilee.

And while they were in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, a massive storm hit. It was a huge storm. And, you know, I’ve been out on lakes.

I’ve been out in fishing boats when storms have hit. And you want to go back to the dock. You want to get out of the storm.

I mean, it’s just smarter that way because of lightning. But, you know, the waves. But I’ve never seen anything that I thought was life-threatening, where it just blew up all at once, and I think we’re going to die out here in the middle of the lake.

And part of the reason for that is our lakes in Oklahoma tend to be fake. We built them ourselves. They’re not natural lakes.

And so they follow the old path of the river, the river valley. And so they tend to be very long and narrow, and you’re always fairly close to shore. So I researched, you know, what is it about the Sea of Galilee?

Because I’ve heard for years about storms on the Sea of Galilee. What is it about the Sea of Galilee? Because I’m picturing, and from the maps, it’s a lake.

It’s not like he’s out in the middle of the Mediterranean. Why were they so worried about this storm? Well, this massive storm hit, and it’s a decent-sized body of water.

I tried to compare how big the Sea of Galilee is, and as far as Oklahoma lakes go, it’s comparable to the size of Grand Lake. Not quite as big as Texoma or Ufaula, but bigger than things like Hefner or Thunderbird. It’s a pretty good-sized body of water, but it’s not spread out and stretched out like ours are.

It’s compact like a big, somewhat flattened circle. So you get out into the middle of that, and there’s no land anywhere close by. It’s about, what was it, 64 square miles of water.

You get out in the middle of that, you’re a good ways away from land. And I read an article by a physicist named Donald DeYoung who said the Sea of Galilee has a maximum depth of 200 feet, or did in that day. Now it’s closer to about 150 because the lake level is sinking.

That and they’re taking the water to use for the population. But anyway, it’s a fairly shallow sea as far as seas go. And shallow bodies of water are more susceptible to temperature fluctuations.

If you put an inch of water in your pot, it’s going to take a lot less time to boil than if you filled it all the way to the top. So the temperature fluctuations affect the sea. They make it kind of volatile.

And it’s a place where you’ve got the cool, dry air that comes in over the mountains. That air tumbles about 2,000 feet down into the Sea of Galilee area where it meets the warm, moist air from the Mediterranean. And we know all about here in Oklahoma what happens when the dry, cool air from the Rockies hits the warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico.

Things can spin up real fast, can’t they? So it was just a real turbulent place, and so we’re talking massive storms. Why is he giving us a lesson on meteorology? Just because it helped me wrap my mind around why were they so scared of this storm, because I can’t picture any time I’ve been on a lake and been that scared.

They were in an area that was just a powder keg for life-threatening storms. And the storm that came up was unexpected. It just seems to have come up out of nowhere. They didn’t go out on the sea expecting that there was going to be a storm that night and preparing for it.

They went out and there it was. It was brutal. It just, the way the Bible describes it, it beat their small vessel. It just knocked them around.

It was an unrelenting storm. It didn’t just knock them around and then it was gone. It kept going.

It kept raging until their whole boat is filling up with water. Now what happens when a boat fills up with water? It sinks.

The water comes up, the boat goes down. That’s the basic physics of it. And so all of these things combined, they were genuinely afraid for their lives.

It’s not that dramatic thing where we say, I was scared to death. No, they literally thought they were going to die because this massive storm came up out of nowhere. And they are nowhere near the shore.

They’re nowhere near the safe haven of the docks. They’re out in the middle of the water, probably too far away to swim, even if it wasn’t massive waves, and there’s no rescue in sight. They weren’t being dramatic.

It was dark. It was chaotic. The ship was going down, and they were in a terrible mess.

They were in a terrible situation. Then we look at verse 38. And it says, And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow.

that’s referring to Jesus he was asleep in the back of the ship asleep on a pillow tired from teaching the people all day and they await him and say unto him master carest thou not that we perish I love the way Mark writes a lot of times with a sense of urgency you know you read through Mark and a lot of times very next thing immediately this happened and if you notice Mark he doesn’t say Jesus him up. He’s writing in present tense. He’s saying, and they wake him up.

And he’s talking about it like, you know, you read Mark’s writing and it’s almost like he’s there and you’re there and he’s, it’s happening now. This is a big deal to Mark. And he says, they wake him up and they say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?

Carest thou not that we perish? Jesus slept through this whole thing. There was no, it didn’t bother him.

And it It reminds me of telling you all before how it irritates my wife that I will sleep through everything in the house unless she actually physically shakes me and wakes me up. You could send a marching band through there. I’m not going to wake up.

I sleep through storms all the time. I can totally relate to Jesus in this circumstance. He was tired.

He’s asleep. Who cares that there’s a storm going on? He really does care.

But he slept through all of it. And, you know, depending on how you look at it, this points to his deity. It points to his humanity.

Because there’s the fact that he’s God. He’s not going to be worried about some silly storm. But there’s also the fact that he’s man.

He’s tired. He’s exhausted. So they had to go and they woke him up and they asked him, do you even care that we’re about to die?

They asked him that question, do you even care? See, they got in the middle of their personal storm, And Jesus didn’t do exactly what they thought he ought to do. And so their feelings went to, do you even care?

They had to have known that Jesus cared. These people walked with him every day. They had seen ample evidence of the way he cared for people, of the way he demonstrated that care.

And yet they felt in the midst of that storm, in that moment, while he lay sleeping as the ship’s about to go down, their feelings led them to a place of, do you even care? And a lot of us, as I’ve said before, come to those points. We come to those points where we’re in the middle of the storm, and even though we have an intellectual understanding of his care for us, we know he cares, we believe he cares.

In the midst of that moment, we don’t feel like he cares. They didn’t feel like he cared. In that moment, many of us will ask him, do you even care?

Do you even care? Lord, you see what’s going on with my children. Do you even care?

Lord you know what the doctor just diagnosed do you even care Lord you see what’s happening with my finances do you even care we all get into these points where life just beats us around like we’re this boat on the sea of Galilee the storms come up and the storms are about to sink us and we don’t see God moving by the way it doesn’t mean he’s not moving just because we don’t see it but we don’t see God moving exactly when and how we think he ought to and so our feelings lead us to ask, do you even care? And Jesus here gave them the ultimate answer. See, he doesn’t get up and argue with them and say, of course I care, you know I care, and try to convince them.

Jesus doesn’t answer them with words. He gets up and he shows them what they knew to be true all along. He gets up and he proves the way that he cares for them.

He shows them. So we see in verse 39, And he arose and he rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased and there was a great calm.

And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? And how is it that ye have no faith? And they feared exceedingly and said to one another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?

Jesus got up and rebuked the wind. And I love this. He just speaks to the wind and it stops.

The wind and the massive storm, he speaks to it and it stops. I can’t even get my children or dogs to stop making noise by speaking to them. And yet all of nature bends to his will.

He got up and rebuked the wind. For him to rebuke the wind means that he commanded it with authority. That word indicates that he had authority over it.

See, I can command things to happen all day long, but if I don’t have the authority to make it happen, it’s not going to. I can try to command you to do things but I don’t have authority I don’t have authority over you in that sense Julie I can tell you get rid of that she’s not going to do it she didn’t even have to wait to hear what it was I was going to say it’s just the fact that I said I’m going to command you she says no I understand I’m the same way I’ll do just about anything you ask me but tell me and it’s not going to happen But Jesus had authority. See, I don’t have the authority to command Julie anything.

Jesus had authority, and even the storms had to listen. Do you know those winds that were raging around and those waters that were splashing against the boat? They came into existence because he spoke them into existence.

And so when he spoke to them and said, settle down, they had to settle down. He rebuked them with authority. That word peace means quiet down.

Quiet down. Shh. Stop.

And when he says be still, I mean, we know what that means, to be still. But when I looked at the Greek word, it talked about how that word is connected to the word for muzzling something. Like you’d muzzle a dog.

And so he’s really putting the storm under his authority of saying, you stop that. And he just clamps down on it. And the amazing thing about it is that when Jesus spoke, the winds stopped.

They stopped. I wouldn’t encourage you to try this but if you ever got the opportunity and you’re standing outside where there’s a tornado coming I’d encourage you to get underground but if you’re ever caught out and can’t get to safety if you try to tell the tornado sit, stay probably nothing’s going to happen but Jesus spoke and the winds obeyed the storm died down and it wasn’t just the picture that we get here because it says at the end of verse 39 the wind ceased and there was a great calm the picture we get here is not just that Jesus said stop and the storm stopped and everything went back to normal you know normal winds and all that everything was quiet everything stopped imagine that being outside in the midst of this storm and it’s not just that it slowly goes away and things return to normal but then it becomes so calm you can hear a pin drop. One minute, winds are raging.

The next minute, absolute calm. That’s what happened. Everything got very still.

And then Jesus asked them a question. You see, they had asked him a question. Do you even care?

Do you even care? Well, he showed them the answer. Of course I do.

Then he turned around and asked them a question. He said, why are you so afraid? Why do you still not believe?

And I read this and I don’t think this is a chastising question. I don’t think he’s getting on to them. I could be wrong about this, but I feel like the Lord’s speaking to them with pity, with compassion and saying, why do you still not believe?

After everything you’ve seen, why do you still not trust me? He’s encouraging them here to have faith in him, to trust him. But don’t misunderstand what this faith is that he’s talking about.

Faith doesn’t mean that they had to sit in the boat quietly and drown. We’re just going to sit here because we believe that Jesus is going to take care of it, so we’re just going to sit here and drown if that’s what we need to do, and we’ll see what happens. No, faith, you can have faith and still go wake Jesus up.

So I think faith says, Jesus is the only one who can fix this. Lord! But it was the fact that they went to him and said, Don’t you care?

Oh, wait a minute. You know me better than that. You know I care.

Why do you still not trust me is the question. So if they had been driven by faith instead of fear, they still would have cried out to Jesus. They still would have woken him up.

But they wouldn’t have questioned his care for him or for them. You know, when you get right down to it, Jesus wasn’t surprised by the storm. He knew that the storm was coming.

He knew the storm was coming before he ever got on the boat. He knew that storm was going to be there before he ever created the water and the wind that were going to create the storm. None of this caught him by surprise.

They didn’t wake him up and he said, oh, wow, gracious, what storm? Jesus knew the storm was coming and he got on the boat with them. How do we know that he cared about them?

Because he got on the boat with them. At that point, they were amazed that nature bent to his will. They were amazed at what he was able to do.

And I think from that point, they began to understand a little bit more about just exactly who this was that they were following. And folks, as we look at this story, we often find ourselves, as I’ve said already, we often find ourselves in these kinds of situations. We often find ourselves in storms, and I don’t necessarily mean literal storms, although there have been some of those as well.

But we find ourselves in the middle of storms, and some of them are big and some of them are small. But the thing is about these storms that when you’re in the middle of the storm, it doesn’t matter how small it is, the whole world looks like a storm if you’re in the very middle and that’s all you can see. If you’re in the middle of a forest, I mean, it may be a one-acre forest, but if you look around and all you can see are trees in every direction, it looks like the whole world’s a forest. Well, the same thing applies with a storm.

If all you can see are the waves and the clouds and you can hear the wind and you can’t see anything else, then it looks like the whole world is a storm, even if it’s a small one. In that moment, their whole world was a storm. They weren’t worried about what was going on on the shore.

Their whole world was a storm, and sometimes we get that way too. But instead of fearing the storm, whatever it may be, whatever that storm may be, as I said earlier, it may be a family situation, it may be finances, it may be a medical thing, it may be something at work, whatever you’re struggling with or whatever you’re about to be struggling with, Whatever this storm is that comes on you and you’re in the middle of it and it looks like the whole world’s a storm, instead of fearing the storm, we’re called to have faith in the God who is with us on the boat. See, they should have known Jesus cared for them, not because there were no storms, but because in the midst of the storm he was with them on the boat.

There’s a song that, I want to say it’s an old song, it’s not that old. It was somewhat popular, I think, when I was in high school. The chorus of it, it talks about this story, and the chorus of it says, sometimes he calms the storm, and other times he calms his child.

That’s exactly right. And I’ve been trying, as I was writing this message, not to quote that song in every verse, because it just kept coming back to mind. Sometimes he calms the storm, and sometimes he calms us in the midst of the storm.

Sometimes he calms that storm, and other times he rides out the storm with us. And I think we see the evidence of both. in this story.

We can see his care for them in the fact that, fine, I’ll speak to the storm, I’ll make it stop. But I think looking at it in hindsight, looking at it from outside the storm, we can look at it and see his care for them in the fact that he was with them on the boat, even knowing the storm was going to happen. So what that means for us is that if today you wonder if he really cares about you, because boy, if he really cared about me, I wouldn’t be going through this storm, you may be spending too much time focused on the storm.

If we find ourselves doubting his care for us, we’re probably spending too much time focused on the storm instead of looking to the one who’s with us on the boat. Folks, he’s demonstrated his love for us time and time again. God has demonstrated his love for us time and time again.

And I’ll tell you this, Romans says that God commended his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That verse means God showed us his love in this way. God went to these lengths to show us his love.

While we were still sinning, Christ died for us. And I think last week I told you, I mentioned to you John 3. 16 where it says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth then he shall not perish but have everlasting life.

We read that and we think that word so means the amount that he loved us. When what it’s really talking about is the way he loved us. For God loved the world in this way that he sent his only begotten son.

Now it’s a small distinction, but we need to understand that is the lengths that God went to to demonstrate his love for you, his care for you. God cares enough about you that He was willing to give up His only Son. God the Father was willing to give up His only begotten Son.

God the Son loved you enough that He was willing to give His own life. He was willing to be killed in the most gruesome, agonizing way to pay for your sins. That’s how much He loves you.

And then there are all these smaller examples. As I go through my own life, I look at the way God has taken care of things. And I look at the way that he’s dealt with the situation, not always the way I wanted him to, not always in the timing that I wanted, but in the way that was best. And I can see that God has demonstrated his love and his care in all these other ways, but especially at the cross.

And it reminds me, I should not doubt his care for me just because my feelings about a particular situation have convinced me to turn a blind eye to all this other evidence. He has demonstrated his love for us in unmistakable ways. And it’s easy to get in the middle of the storm and take your eyes off of him and what he’s done and forget about that and begin to doubt it because of the storm.

But let me encourage you, if you’re going through one of those storms or if you’re about to, take your eyes off the storm and focus squarely on the one who’s in the boat with you. And if you ever doubt his love for you, if you ever doubt his care for you, his concern for you, Look no further than the cross. God didn’t have to save us.

He didn’t have to love us, but he chose to anyway. And when we’d sinned against him, he would have been entirely justified if he’d looked at us and said, you know what, enjoy hell. That’s fine if that’s what you want.

That might have been my reaction if I was God. Praise God I’m not. He’s more gracious than I am.

But he could have looked at us and said, that’s fine. If that’s what you want to do, just.. .

And he would have had every right to do that. He doesn’t owe us salvation. But he looked at us and he loved us, and he went to the utmost lengths to save us.

He sent Jesus to pay the entire price for our sin. For every sin that you will have ever committed, Jesus Christ took responsibility for sin, for your sin, for sin that was not his. None of it was his.

He took responsibility for your sin, and he was nailed to the cross, and he shed his blood, and he died. And every drop of blood, every bit of agony that he went through, the life that he laid down he laid down for you it was to pay for your sins because he loved you that much and because he loved you that much he gave us the ultimate proof because he had an ultimate love for us he showed that love in the ultimate way now if you’ve never trusted Christ as your savior I’d like to invite you to do so this morning trusting him as your savior won’t eliminate the storms from your life it won’t I’ve heard people say I trusted Christ as my Savior and things have been great ever since. Like, what did you say differently than I did?

Is there a different deal I’m not aware of that I didn’t? No, I think they’re looking at it through rose-colored glasses and forgetting what they’ve gone through. And, you know, hey, if you can do that, if you can look at life that positively, great.

But I’m telling you the truth this morning. The trust in Christ as your Savior doesn’t eliminate the storms in your life. It doesn’t mean that everything’s going to be perfect.

I’ve had way more storms in my life after I trusted Christ than before. And many others in the room can say the same thing. So trusting him doesn’t eliminate the storms. But what it does do is take advantage of the offer that he’s made of salvation.

What it does is this sin that we carry, this sin that separates us from God, he’s paid for. If we’ll just accept that he’s paid for it on our behalf. And that sin is transferred to him.

And we trust him as our savior. And God looks at us and says, okay, good. Jesus has already paid for that sin.

Clean slate. That sin that separates us from God is no longer in our account. But it’s taken from us and what’s given to us is the righteousness of Christ in its place.

And so God then looks at us and what he sees is the righteousness of Christ in us. God forgives us. And we’re reconciled to God.

We become adopted as His children, as His sons and daughters. And we get to have a relationship with Him. We get to have peace with Him.

And we get to have eternal life with Him in heaven. You can’t get that by trying to be good enough. You can’t get that by trying to earn it, by trying to deserve it, by just trying harder to be religious and get your life cleaned up.

That forgiveness and that reconciliation and that peace and that adoption and that eternal life with Him, those things are only available because Jesus Christ suffered, bled, and died to pay for our sins in full. And this morning, all that’s left for you to do is believe that Jesus Christ paid for your sins in full and that He rose again from the dead and then ask God to forgive you and save you because of what Jesus Christ did.

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