Preaching Goes Viral

Reject Fear

Analogies to Mythic Narratives

You know, the disciples who lived with Jesus and who traveled with him for his three years of ministry, they had to learn that they needed God's help to face fears too. I want to take you to a story today in scripture where the disciples learn, how to reject fear and how to let God help them do that. It's in the book of Mark, the gospel of Mark it's in chapter four. Now here in chapter four, Jesus is teaching a large crowd and they're on the shores of the sea of Galilee, which even though it's called a sea it's fresh water and the crowd was so big that Jesus got into a boat and pushed off from shore a little bit so that people could see him and hear him. And he spent the day doing that. And now in verse 35 of chapter four of Mark, we pick up the story. It says that day when evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, let us go over to the other side, leaving the crowd behind. They took him along just as he was in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, teacher don't you care? If we drown, Jesus got up rebuked. the wind said to the waves, quiet, be still. Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? They were terrified and asked each other, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him.

2022-12-16

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Scott Merriner