Jesus' Power to Save

Tim coming out of the rough water - Garrett Bay, Door County, Wisconsin
 August, 2012  (I'm  the "speck" in the pic about to get hit with a whitecap)
Photo by Carrie Schuessler

Mark 4:41 Wind and Sea Obey Him

When I'm taking in the beauty of nature, my thoughts occasionally  turn to God. That happened  yesterday in Door County, swimming in the rough waters of Garrett Bay, when I thought of this verse:

And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?"
Mark 4:41 (RSV)

The water in Garrett Bay (Lake Michigan) was shallow enough that we were not crazy to be swimming.  Tim (age 10)  and I were trying to get out to our usual destination spot which was a big rock about 50 yards from the shore, but we couldn't do it.  With gusts of over 40 knots we couldn't fight the wind and the waves.  I got knocked down into some sharp rocks and  banged up my knee a little bit.   Tim gave up after about 15 minutes, and I hung in there a little longer, but then I had to head in early as well.  It all reminded me of the storm out on the Sea of Galilee described in Mark 4.  Fighting the wind and the waves out in the boat, which was filling up with water (Mark 4:37) can't be compared to our misadventure trying to swim, of course.  The storm on the Sea of Galilee was life threatening, although Jesus was not alarmed.  (He was "asleep on the cushion"! Mark 4:38)   The disciples  were cold and they were afraid - and they were upset that Jesus was asleep.  And then to see Jesus wake up  and  rebuke the storm and stop it  right in front of their eyes had to be a shock.

The storm displays the power of nature. Jesus shows that he has power over nature.   The disciples  had seen the demons obey Jesus, and now they see the wind and the sea obey him.  But they did not just witness a "nature" miracle.  They were in trouble out on the water, and Jesus saved them.   Sometimes getting to know and understand the mercy and power of  Jesus is not about the study of doctrine, themes or teaching.  It is about placing yourself into a Gospel scene.  Here my own experience with the wind and the waves helped me to picture the sights and sounds of this demonstration of the saving power of God described in Mark chapter 4.  

In the Greek  - a Violent Furious Storm

Bible verses are like songs.  Today when I hear a song from my teen years I associate it with places and events  from those years.  There are passages from the NT that remind me of when and where I was when I first studied them closely.  Mark 4:41 is special to me because I learned it in the original  Greek when I was 21 and in college, taking a Greek class at University of Wisconsin - Madison.  It was a classical Greek class which means our texts came from classical Greek writers like Plato, not from the Bible.  But our teacher gave us a break one day and she helped us translate Mark 4:41 (quoted above) which in Greek  looked like this: καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν φόβον μέγαν, καὶ ἔλεγον πρὸς ἀλλήλους, Τίς ἄρα οὗτός ἐστιν ὅτι καὶ ὁ ἄνεμος καὶ ἡ θάλασσα ὑπακούει αὐτῷ.   (I realize that these words and this script will be meaningless to almost anyone who reads this.)  This became  the first  Bible verse that I learned from  the original Greek.

After taking this class in college I went out and bought some Greek study tools, a word study  book and an interlinear NT with the Greek, and stuck with it for awhile.  How did it help with Bible study?  Greek has many loaded words which convey meanings in the original that get watered down in translation.  A good example is right here in Mark chapter 4 where at verse 37 in the RSV  we have "a great storm of wind arose."  The adjective "great" (Greek megale) means "violent."   M.R. Vincent says that  "storm"  (Greek lailaps) means "furious storm" and is close to the word "hurricane."  If Vincent is right, it was a violent and furious storm.

Word Study 

I'm sorry to say that after three or four years,  with the "press of business" (work, family and distractions) I dropped the Greek.   But in recent months I have come back to it, mainly  for word study purposes,  and I am enjoying it greatly. I find that if I take a few extra minutes to look up a keyword from the verse in the original language, the message of the verse stays with me.  An excellent book for beginners is Learn New Testament Greek   (Baker 1993) by John H. Dobson.  For word study and to see the history of the use of a word  I use Word Studies in the New Testament (2012 reprint of 1886 publication)  by M.R. Vincent.  I also use this online resource from biblos.com which has a menu option for text analysis going word for word through the verse,  with Greek, Greek transliteration and English, and it includes a column from Strong's Concordance which explains the use of the word.

What if you want to get serious about this kind of language study?   For that we have colleges,  seminaries and theological schools.  I am not suggesting that people can do this on their own.

Tenth Avenue North - Strong Enough to Save You

My daughter, Carrie, who took the pic shown above, read this and directed me to the popular  song by Tenth Avenue North titled "Strong Enough to Save" which has these lyrics:  "The one the wind and waves obey is strong enough to save you."