Christs Ship on the Sea of Galilee, a Picture of the Church of Our Times
Matthew 8:23-27
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Grace be with you, mercy and peace, from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ Jesus.
Reading the history of the Christian Church, we find that men think the church is always in great danger of being annihilated; yet it has always regained its strength.
How small Christs Church was when he left the world after his work of redemption! It consisted of no more than a few hundred souls, and most were poor simple folk. Even the twelve apostles were uneducated, timid men; through the preaching of the Gospel they of all people were to spread the Christian Church throughout the whole world. This appeared to be wholly impossible.
But what happened? Miraculously equipped on the first Pentecost with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, they went out into all the world to preach the Gospel to every creature; after no more than about thirty years Paul, who him[wash my mouth]self became a Christian after being a persecutor, could report to the Colossians that the Gospel was "preached to every creature which is under heaven. Col 1:23. A few years later he could write to Timothy, "God was manifest in the flesh, ... preached unto the gentiles, believed on in the world," 1 Tim 3:16. When all the apostles had died, the Christian Church had already spread over the whole world; there were Christian congregations in all the lands of the world.
If the Christian Church was founded during the bloody persecutions by the Jews and heathen, these persecutions really first began after it had been founded; the more numerous Christians became, the more the worldly rulers feared that the Christians could become dangerous. Hence, they and particularly the Roman emperor decided to wipe out the Christian Church. The Roman emperors and their officials used every imaginable device to torture the Christians, in order to cause them to deny Christ and thus exterminate the Christian Church.
They did not only behead, drown, strangle, and burn Christians but al[wash my mouth]so dreamed up every possible way to make their death especially frightful and painful. Christians became food for wild animals; they were roasted slowly over a fire, smothered in sewers, crucified head down and ravening animals were allowed to gnaw at them, killed by thirst; the heathen tore off little by little every piece of flesh from their bones with shells or white hot tongs; they poured boiling oil and pitch into their mouths; they tied their naked bodies to corp[wash my mouth]ses, threw both into dark and stinking pits, and let them die of hunger and rot with the corpses. In the first three centuries many hundreds of thousands of Christians were killed. When the persecution of Emperor Diocletian and his co[wash my mouth]regents ended in the year 310, they issued as a remembrance of their victory over the Christians edicts with the superscription, After wiping out the name Christians who wanted to overthrow the kingdom, or, After the complete exter[wash my mouth]mination of the Christian heresy everywhere.
But was this proud superscription really true? No! Just before a Church father had written, The more you cut us down the more we increase. The blood of the Christian is a seed. Yes, the church historian Eusebius writes, The very swords at last became dull and broke in pieces as though worn out; the hangmen became tired and had to relieve one another; but the Christians began to sing songs of praise and thanks until their last breath to the honor of al[wash my mouth]mighty God.
All the persecutors died a frightful death. The last such, Emperor Galeri[wash my mouth]us, his body rotting with inexpressible pains, feeling Gods wrath, published in the year 311 another edict. He declared that his intention of bringing the Chris[wash my mouth]tians back to the religion of their fathers was not attained, and they themselves were only hindered in the worship of their own gods. They should therefore be tolerated and now pray to their God for the welfare of the kingdom and their emperor.
When this fanatic had died and Emperor Constantine became a Christian himself in the year 323, the Christians with but brief interruptions enjoyed complete rest from persecution. But now even more dangerous enemies, false teachers, arose in their own midst; they did not seek the temporal life of the Church but the truth on which it was founded and thus slay it spiritually. But see! no matter how many heretics arose, God always awakened men who exposed the heresy and defended the truth. The Church faced even greater danger through the rise of the papacy. It seemed to have become a worldly kingdom of priests, Christ pushed from his throne, the saving Gospel done away with, and thus the Church surely wrecked. Even the earlier bloody persecutions arose again, and now in the midst of the Church herself. But lo! just when all help seemed to be gone, it was at the door. God awakened Dr. Martin Luther who carried out the work of a complete reformation of the Church.
Alas, today the Christian Church again lies in the dust. It is true that hundreds of millions of men still are Christian in name, but they are eith[wash my mouth]er unbelievers who laugh at the mysteries of the Christian religion, or they are the sects who cling to comfortless human doctrines. Thetrue Christians who stand in the true faith are only a very small flock. The enemy of the Church again triumphs and predicts in a thousand writings that the Christian Church will soon be completely wiped out.
What now? Do we have reason to fear that the Church will at last per[wash my mouth]ish? No, no! my friends! According to Gods Word this is absolutely impossi[wash my mouth]ble. Todays Gospel guarantees that no matter how severely the storms may rage now, Christs little ship will not be wrecked. Let us now hear and consid[wash my mouth]er this Gospel for the purpose of strengthening us in this belief.
On the basis of this text let the subject of todays consideration be
1. A Picture Of The Dangers In Which It Hovers,
2. A Picture of The Members It Has,
3. A Picture Of The Protection Under Which It Stands.
The day on which the event related in our text took place was the same day in which Christ had miraculously healed the leper and the servant of the centurion at Capernaum. That we heard in the Gospel of last Sunday. This had been a day of especially hard work. Matthew tells us that Christ that same day healed not only Peters mother-in-law, but in addition whole crowds of possessed and sick. Evening finally came and many people still crowded around him; per[wash my mouth]haps they merely wished to see still more miracles; he therefore commanded his disciples to prepare ship for a trip to the eastern shore of the Sea of Gali[wash my mouth]lee. Whereupon we read in our text, And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples, followed him. v.23.
In any case the ship was no palatial merchantman, but one of Peters small simple fishing boats. No vessel had ever carried a more precious cargo than this little boat. It carried something more precious than all the gold, pearls, and precious stones in the world. It bore the Savior of the world and the twelve apostles who were to carry the message of salvation into all the world. It carried the Lord of the Church himself and its twelve pillars. One can indeed say that had this ship sunk the Church would have gone down and the whole world would have been lost.
Now one would have supposed that if any ship would have had smooth sailing then this would have been the one. But what do we hear? We read in our text, And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the
ship was covered with the waves. v.24.
And, behold, the evangelist writes. With this little word he shows that something which no one expected suddenly arose. When the ship had thrust from land, the evening sky was clear and bright. Wind and sea were calm, but be[wash my mouth]hold, scarcely had they reached the high seas then suddenly, as we read in our text, a great tempest arose in the sea. As we see from the original text, this storm was a swell which came from the lake bottom as would arise from an earthquake. The sea suddenly swelled and created waves which, rising and falling rapidly, lifted the ship like a ball, now to giddy heights, now hurling it down into the trough. Mark adds that also a great storm of wind or a hurricane was added to the swell from the depths of the sea. It seized the little ship and spun it like a top. Sky, wind, and sea seemed to have rebelled.
The result was that the waves not only smote the ship but, as our text says, the ship was covered with the waves. Covered by the sea, it appeared to be about to sink. All human help, strength, and wisdom was helpless. Even those in the ship, fishermen familiar with the sea, who certainly had passed through many a dangerous storm, now feared for their lives.
And what was the most frightening, we read that Christ the Lord, in whose presence the disciples otherwise feared nothing, was asleep. He seemed neither to know of nor care about the danger in which his disciples were. Yes, Mark informs us that he lay on a pillow near the helmsman. Christ seemed to be the reason why the ship was in this danger. Only one push -- and ship and crew would sink into the depths of the sea.
What does our text vividly picture to us? Nothing else than the great danger in which the ship of the Christian Church is at all times, especially in our day. Like a ship the Church sails from country to country on the sea of time. Christ is the captain. The preachers of the Gospel are the helmsmen. Faith with baptism is the ships gangplank, hope its anchor, the cross its mast. The Word is the sails; the wind which swells these sails is the Holy Ghost, its flag the creed, the Christians compose the crew, and the harbor toward which the ship sails is heaven.
What happened to this ship of the Church? It had no sooner quietly weighed anchor at the time of the apostles and sailed upon the world, when be[wash my mouth]hold there arose a swell from beneath and a hurricane from above. Hell, world, and heaven itself. seemed to have conspired against the ship of the Church and re[wash my mouth]solved to destroy it. Now the swell of bloody persecution raged. Now the hurri[wash my mouth]cane of false doctrine.
If the ship of the Church always was in danger of running aground, shattering, and sinking, it is really the case today. It is true we today do not groan under the cruel rod of persecution. Yes God be eternally praised we here in America enjoy a degree of religious freedom which God has scarcely granted any other land. Nevertheless, here the ship of the Church hovers in greater danger. Our America is not only the land of the sects who preach their false faith everywhere with great show of being the only true saving faith, but also the very enemies of Christ and his Church are here in great power. Unless God prevents it they can, after they are in power, take our freedom from us. In many newspapers and other periodicals they rail at everything holy. They organ[wash my mouth]ize secret societies into which they draw the unsuspecting, but from whom they hide their plans. They beguile more and more with their sweet talk of light, enlightenment, progress, and freedom.
Truly, the ship of the church is again in great trouble. The spirit of the times like a hurricane sometimes lifts it up to giddy heights and some[wash my mouth]times pulls it down into frightful depths. Countless baptized Christians have already fallen away and daily more follow. And what is most frightening, Christ seems again to sleep and watch peacefully how the storm tears the sail of the Word and the flag of the creed into tatters, snaps the mast of the cross, and covers the ship of the Church with the waves of sin and unbelief.
.........continued next post
Matthew 8:23-27
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Grace be with you, mercy and peace, from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ Jesus.
Reading the history of the Christian Church, we find that men think the church is always in great danger of being annihilated; yet it has always regained its strength.
How small Christs Church was when he left the world after his work of redemption! It consisted of no more than a few hundred souls, and most were poor simple folk. Even the twelve apostles were uneducated, timid men; through the preaching of the Gospel they of all people were to spread the Christian Church throughout the whole world. This appeared to be wholly impossible.
But what happened? Miraculously equipped on the first Pentecost with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, they went out into all the world to preach the Gospel to every creature; after no more than about thirty years Paul, who him[wash my mouth]self became a Christian after being a persecutor, could report to the Colossians that the Gospel was "preached to every creature which is under heaven. Col 1:23. A few years later he could write to Timothy, "God was manifest in the flesh, ... preached unto the gentiles, believed on in the world," 1 Tim 3:16. When all the apostles had died, the Christian Church had already spread over the whole world; there were Christian congregations in all the lands of the world.
If the Christian Church was founded during the bloody persecutions by the Jews and heathen, these persecutions really first began after it had been founded; the more numerous Christians became, the more the worldly rulers feared that the Christians could become dangerous. Hence, they and particularly the Roman emperor decided to wipe out the Christian Church. The Roman emperors and their officials used every imaginable device to torture the Christians, in order to cause them to deny Christ and thus exterminate the Christian Church.
They did not only behead, drown, strangle, and burn Christians but al[wash my mouth]so dreamed up every possible way to make their death especially frightful and painful. Christians became food for wild animals; they were roasted slowly over a fire, smothered in sewers, crucified head down and ravening animals were allowed to gnaw at them, killed by thirst; the heathen tore off little by little every piece of flesh from their bones with shells or white hot tongs; they poured boiling oil and pitch into their mouths; they tied their naked bodies to corp[wash my mouth]ses, threw both into dark and stinking pits, and let them die of hunger and rot with the corpses. In the first three centuries many hundreds of thousands of Christians were killed. When the persecution of Emperor Diocletian and his co[wash my mouth]regents ended in the year 310, they issued as a remembrance of their victory over the Christians edicts with the superscription, After wiping out the name Christians who wanted to overthrow the kingdom, or, After the complete exter[wash my mouth]mination of the Christian heresy everywhere.
But was this proud superscription really true? No! Just before a Church father had written, The more you cut us down the more we increase. The blood of the Christian is a seed. Yes, the church historian Eusebius writes, The very swords at last became dull and broke in pieces as though worn out; the hangmen became tired and had to relieve one another; but the Christians began to sing songs of praise and thanks until their last breath to the honor of al[wash my mouth]mighty God.
All the persecutors died a frightful death. The last such, Emperor Galeri[wash my mouth]us, his body rotting with inexpressible pains, feeling Gods wrath, published in the year 311 another edict. He declared that his intention of bringing the Chris[wash my mouth]tians back to the religion of their fathers was not attained, and they themselves were only hindered in the worship of their own gods. They should therefore be tolerated and now pray to their God for the welfare of the kingdom and their emperor.
When this fanatic had died and Emperor Constantine became a Christian himself in the year 323, the Christians with but brief interruptions enjoyed complete rest from persecution. But now even more dangerous enemies, false teachers, arose in their own midst; they did not seek the temporal life of the Church but the truth on which it was founded and thus slay it spiritually. But see! no matter how many heretics arose, God always awakened men who exposed the heresy and defended the truth. The Church faced even greater danger through the rise of the papacy. It seemed to have become a worldly kingdom of priests, Christ pushed from his throne, the saving Gospel done away with, and thus the Church surely wrecked. Even the earlier bloody persecutions arose again, and now in the midst of the Church herself. But lo! just when all help seemed to be gone, it was at the door. God awakened Dr. Martin Luther who carried out the work of a complete reformation of the Church.
Alas, today the Christian Church again lies in the dust. It is true that hundreds of millions of men still are Christian in name, but they are eith[wash my mouth]er unbelievers who laugh at the mysteries of the Christian religion, or they are the sects who cling to comfortless human doctrines. Thetrue Christians who stand in the true faith are only a very small flock. The enemy of the Church again triumphs and predicts in a thousand writings that the Christian Church will soon be completely wiped out.
What now? Do we have reason to fear that the Church will at last per[wash my mouth]ish? No, no! my friends! According to Gods Word this is absolutely impossi[wash my mouth]ble. Todays Gospel guarantees that no matter how severely the storms may rage now, Christs little ship will not be wrecked. Let us now hear and consid[wash my mouth]er this Gospel for the purpose of strengthening us in this belief.
The text. Matthew 8:23-27.
On the basis of this text let the subject of todays consideration be
CHRISTS SHIP ON THE SEA OF GALILEE,
A PICTURE OF THE CHURCH OF OUR TIMES
1. A Picture Of The Dangers In Which It Hovers,
2. A Picture of The Members It Has,
3. A Picture Of The Protection Under Which It Stands.
I.
The day on which the event related in our text took place was the same day in which Christ had miraculously healed the leper and the servant of the centurion at Capernaum. That we heard in the Gospel of last Sunday. This had been a day of especially hard work. Matthew tells us that Christ that same day healed not only Peters mother-in-law, but in addition whole crowds of possessed and sick. Evening finally came and many people still crowded around him; per[wash my mouth]haps they merely wished to see still more miracles; he therefore commanded his disciples to prepare ship for a trip to the eastern shore of the Sea of Gali[wash my mouth]lee. Whereupon we read in our text, And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples, followed him. v.23.
In any case the ship was no palatial merchantman, but one of Peters small simple fishing boats. No vessel had ever carried a more precious cargo than this little boat. It carried something more precious than all the gold, pearls, and precious stones in the world. It bore the Savior of the world and the twelve apostles who were to carry the message of salvation into all the world. It carried the Lord of the Church himself and its twelve pillars. One can indeed say that had this ship sunk the Church would have gone down and the whole world would have been lost.
Now one would have supposed that if any ship would have had smooth sailing then this would have been the one. But what do we hear? We read in our text, And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the
ship was covered with the waves. v.24.
And, behold, the evangelist writes. With this little word he shows that something which no one expected suddenly arose. When the ship had thrust from land, the evening sky was clear and bright. Wind and sea were calm, but be[wash my mouth]hold, scarcely had they reached the high seas then suddenly, as we read in our text, a great tempest arose in the sea. As we see from the original text, this storm was a swell which came from the lake bottom as would arise from an earthquake. The sea suddenly swelled and created waves which, rising and falling rapidly, lifted the ship like a ball, now to giddy heights, now hurling it down into the trough. Mark adds that also a great storm of wind or a hurricane was added to the swell from the depths of the sea. It seized the little ship and spun it like a top. Sky, wind, and sea seemed to have rebelled.
The result was that the waves not only smote the ship but, as our text says, the ship was covered with the waves. Covered by the sea, it appeared to be about to sink. All human help, strength, and wisdom was helpless. Even those in the ship, fishermen familiar with the sea, who certainly had passed through many a dangerous storm, now feared for their lives.
And what was the most frightening, we read that Christ the Lord, in whose presence the disciples otherwise feared nothing, was asleep. He seemed neither to know of nor care about the danger in which his disciples were. Yes, Mark informs us that he lay on a pillow near the helmsman. Christ seemed to be the reason why the ship was in this danger. Only one push -- and ship and crew would sink into the depths of the sea.
What does our text vividly picture to us? Nothing else than the great danger in which the ship of the Christian Church is at all times, especially in our day. Like a ship the Church sails from country to country on the sea of time. Christ is the captain. The preachers of the Gospel are the helmsmen. Faith with baptism is the ships gangplank, hope its anchor, the cross its mast. The Word is the sails; the wind which swells these sails is the Holy Ghost, its flag the creed, the Christians compose the crew, and the harbor toward which the ship sails is heaven.
What happened to this ship of the Church? It had no sooner quietly weighed anchor at the time of the apostles and sailed upon the world, when be[wash my mouth]hold there arose a swell from beneath and a hurricane from above. Hell, world, and heaven itself. seemed to have conspired against the ship of the Church and re[wash my mouth]solved to destroy it. Now the swell of bloody persecution raged. Now the hurri[wash my mouth]cane of false doctrine.
If the ship of the Church always was in danger of running aground, shattering, and sinking, it is really the case today. It is true we today do not groan under the cruel rod of persecution. Yes God be eternally praised we here in America enjoy a degree of religious freedom which God has scarcely granted any other land. Nevertheless, here the ship of the Church hovers in greater danger. Our America is not only the land of the sects who preach their false faith everywhere with great show of being the only true saving faith, but also the very enemies of Christ and his Church are here in great power. Unless God prevents it they can, after they are in power, take our freedom from us. In many newspapers and other periodicals they rail at everything holy. They organ[wash my mouth]ize secret societies into which they draw the unsuspecting, but from whom they hide their plans. They beguile more and more with their sweet talk of light, enlightenment, progress, and freedom.
Truly, the ship of the church is again in great trouble. The spirit of the times like a hurricane sometimes lifts it up to giddy heights and some[wash my mouth]times pulls it down into frightful depths. Countless baptized Christians have already fallen away and daily more follow. And what is most frightening, Christ seems again to sleep and watch peacefully how the storm tears the sail of the Word and the flag of the creed into tatters, snaps the mast of the cross, and covers the ship of the Church with the waves of sin and unbelief.
.........continued next post
