Who is Jesus?
Who can speak to a storm and stop it? Who can heal the sick and rebuke kings? Who can baffle teachers with His intellect and comfort mourners with His touch?
Who is Jesus?
In Mark 4, there is an amazing story about Jesus that involves a raging wind and a stormy sea. Jesus was asleep in a boat while others feared that they were drowning.
Jesus was sleeping in a boat filling up with water! Have you ever been in a boat in a storm? Sleeping is not natural, but Jesus slept while others were panicking.
One of the reasons I like Mark is because of the way he writes. He knows how to capture the drama of an event. He uses the word “immediately” more than 40 times to point out the urgency of Christ’s actions. He describes the places where Jesus went to pray as “lonely” or “secluded”. He portrays Jesus as “moved with compassion” for a leper, “marveling” at unbelief and in Gethsemane, He was “deeply distressed” and “grieved to the point of death”.
But, he captures the true heart of the episode on the sea by describing what happened during the storm. Jesus spoke to the sea—and the storm stopped! Then:
Mark 4:41
“They became very much afraid and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?’”
They were terrified. Mark wrote “exceedingly afraid”. One minute they feared the storm and the next, they realized they were standing in a boat with someone who just stopped it! The question that followed is the only thing they could have said:
“Who is this?”
This is the whole point of the Gospels, is it not? The whole purpose of having a Bible at all is to get the reader to ask that very question. Who is Jesus?
Who can speak to a storm and stop it? Who can heal the sick and rebuke kings? Who can baffle teachers with His intellect and comfort mourners with His touch?
Who can forgive an adulterer and condemn a priest? Who can look into the eyes of a rich man and see his heart and then stand before a tainted Samaritan woman and tell her all about her past?
Who is Jesus?
But, John knew Jesus better than anyone on earth. In his Gospel, there are 7 different times that Jesus answered that question. 7 times He revealed who He was by using the phrase “I Am”.
Buckle up, because for the next couple of weeks we’re going to look at all of those I Am statements.
You will never see Him the same way again.
