The Lord calls His
people to Himself. He has made Himself
known and is making Himself known, all that is required is to come to Him. He calls them out from the nations who are
worshippers of idols. The refrain that
runs through the passage is that He is the Lord or God and there is no
other. Either that statement is true or
it is false. If it is true then the
response is simple, leave the false gods and come to the one true God. If it is false then you should reject this
god as false. All that is required is
that they/we turn to Him and be saved, He does the saving, He gives life,
righteousness and strength. One day the
truth of His claim will be seen and known by all.
So, whom do the wind
and sea obey? That should tell you
everything you need to know. They at
least got one of the questions right that evening. Their first question, "Teacher, don't you
care that we are perishing?" is a far bigger question than they could have
imagined that night. The answer is that
Jesus' mission was completely on account of the fact that they were
perishing. There was nothing on earth He
cared about as much as that. Everything He
did was to save them from perishing. When
He spoke to the waves He commanded peace, but afterwards, when He turned to the
disciples He asked why they were afraid.
I feel certain everyone in the boat was indeed filled with fear. His solution to the problem of fear was not a
command to them to have peace and be still but to have faith. Faith is the antidote to fear. Faith that He cares and is capable of dealing
with any situation.
Paul commands
bondservants or slaves to obey their masters as they would Christ. Does that mean that their masters are as
Christ to them? No, it means that they
are in fact not bondservants of these masters at all, they are bondservants of
Christ, and their service is rendered to Him and not to any man. All that we do is service to Him. It comes down to an issue of sovereignty,
whatever our situation in life may be, it is because in God's good, perfect and
pleasing will that is where He has us, otherwise we would be somewhere
else. We are to serve Him in our
situation, whatever that may require unless illegal or immoral. Obedience is the command Paul gives to
all. How can we see our current
situation as service to Him?
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