Matthew 8:23 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Matthew 8:23

Comments

Christ has given instructions to depart to the other side of Galilee. Mark tells us that he was still in the ship from which he had been preaching with the crowd on the shore, and they took him as he was. Other boats are travelling across the sea with them. ‘Ship’ is really too grand a word; it was probably a small boat with a sail and some sort of shelter where a man could sleep. Christ was tired from his constant labours and soon lay down to catch up on sleep. The journey appears as if it is going to be straightforward, but then suddenly, ‘Behold there arose a great tempest in the sea’ – the Greek word is shaking or agitation. Huge waves cascade over the vessel and they think they begin to be swamped. They must have been almost up to their waists. The boat was now full; it was such an upheaval of the sea. Matthew uses the Greek word that we have in English for seismic disturbance; it was like an earthquake in the sea. This was a storm of seismic proportions.But Christ is asleep. That was remarkable: to sleep so deeply in the midst of a threat to the vessel which has all others, including experience fishermen, severely alarmed. They were terrified. You might think it reasonable that they come and wake him, and yet he seems to reprove them. If they hadn’t been so terrified they would have said, ‘We have woken you up to save us. How can you say this?’ The disciples do not fully grasp who he is; they did not trust him sufficiently. They trusted him enough to wake him and seek his help, but not to save them while he was asleep. They assume that because he is asleep, he must be unaware of what is happening, and think that if only they can make him aware, he will then sense the danger, and do something to help. They believed he was the Messiah (yes, in their minds, more of an earthly Messiah) and should have reasoned that, in order to carry out his mission, he could not be allowed to die, and therefore nothing could hurt him or them, or happen to the boat. How could the Son of God be caught out by falling sleeping at the wrong moment? But false ideas had mixed in with their thinking and confused their understanding of the situation as a whole. The problem was lack of faith, or as Matthew says little faith.

Application

Christ’s sleep was of course deliberate, and was intended to teach the disciples. It showed his own perfect trust in God, and it was intended to teach the disciples a vital lesson. He slept because unlike his disciples he knew with absolute confidence that his heavenly Father would allow no harm to come to him. Christ was with them, and they should have said in line with the sentiment of the hymn: ‘With Christ in the vessel, I smile at the storm’ (John Newton). There are times when the Lord seems distant from us and difficult circumstances threaten to overwhelm us. We pray but see no immediate answer, and we doubt that God has heard us. But hasn’t God promised us that he will never leave or forsake us? Just because we do not see his instant action on our behalf, are we right to assume he is unaware of our predicament?

The unbeliever looks at Christ and sees a limited Saviour, and this is why he does not go to him for salvation. What the lost soul needs spiritually is so great – the complete pardon of all sin so that God remembers our sin no more, and the creation of a new nature within us so that we think and act in entirely new ways. We will not come to him unless we see that he is the Son of God with all power to save. We must trust him with all our hearts for needs that go far beyond anything that man can help with.

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Matthew 8:23 Commentary and Bible Study