Sermon Transcript
June 28, 2026
All right, go ahead and turn your Bibles to Matthew 8:23. All right, Church, stand with me as we read the Word of God (Matt 8:23–27).
As he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. Suddenly, a violent storm arose on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves—but Jesus kept sleeping. So the disciples came and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to die!” He said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him!” (Matthew 8:23–27, CSB)
This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.
Heavenly Father, I ask in the name of your precious Son to please grant me focus. Father, this is a hard sermon to preach because it feels like hypocrisy. But I am grateful that You would even call your preacher to repent when we all come up short. I ask that today, You would encourage us all to be bold in our faith, even in the face of death. I ask that You would help us to walk by faith and not by sight.
Father, I pray that You would help me to supernaturally focus. I stepped up here today, and I felt like my brain just turned off. And that’s fine as long as You take over. But I pray that You would please take this pulpit. Take it as your throne and sit on it. Speak to all of us, even to me, through your Word, by the power of your Spirit, so that we would all be galvanized into more action, so that we would take seriously our call to make disciples, and so that we would fulfill the Great Commission with great boldness and courage. I pray that this sermon would encourage each and every person, even those who are frail, knowing that there’s a great resurrection for each of us who do so. Be with us, Lord Jesus. In Jesus’ name, amen.
In 1986, we discovered a boat on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. And this boat was actually from the first century, and so we believe that we understand a little bit more about this boat that Jesus and His disciples were riding on. This boat is only 24 feet long and about seven feet wide. It’s not very big. In fact, it fits perfectly for about 13 people. One scholar commented that if those two other disciple candidates from our previous passage (Matt 8:18–22) had decided to, in fact, follow Jesus, it would have been too many for a boat like this.
The other thing I want us to make sure that we know: this boat is not like the boat that we see in Rembrandt’s painting. In Rembrandt’s painting, you’ll see Jesus and His disciples in a very scary storm on a boat, and the waves are large—and that part is accurate—but above them are black clouds. Do y’all remember this painting from school? The problem is, the clouds weren’t there. There was no rain either. In fact, it says that this storm is a windstorm (Matt 8:24).
It turns out that in this region, there would be these windstorms that would come out of nowhere. They would come from over the Golan Heights and rush over the sea, or the lake at hand, and these storms would cause a tremendous tempest. In fact, that’s why Matthew more than likely uses this word, seismos (Matt 8:24). This is the word for what we normally refer to as an earthquake; it was an earthquake of the sea.
And in fact, it says that this storm was causing waves so huge that it kalypto’d the boat—it hid the boat (Matt 8:24). Our English translations translate this word as “swamped” the boat. The waves swamped the boat. But they are so huge, they hid them. This is the same word used when Jesus is describing the end of days at the wrath of God, where they are begging the mountains to kalypto them, to swamp them, to hide them (Luke 23:30, Rev 6:16). That’s what the waves are doing to the boat that Jesus and His disciples are in.
It does explain why the disciples would get into the boat to begin with. They’re experienced fishermen. If the clouds and thunderstorms were above, who would get into a boat? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in quite a few boats growing up on the shores of New Orleans, and you never want to be in a boat that small when clouds are overhead. There were a few times as a kid when I thought I was going to die because we were in a torrential rainstorm on a flatboat—it was a very tiny boat. An experienced fisherman wouldn’t get into that boat.
But also, that tells you something, disciples of Christ. Hear me out: you will be doing the will of the Lord, and things unforeseen and unplanned will hit you out of nowhere. But it does not take your Savior by surprise. It will take you by surprise.
After New Orleans, my family followed God’s leadership, and we bought a house closer to New Orleans immediately after Katrina. My mom and dad bought this house, and they bought it next to my uncle. We thought we were going to have a nice little family compound, much like many of you have here in Wake Forest. And when we moved to central Louisiana, my mom and dad were going to follow us, and they went to go sell their house. Lo and behold, their house was built with a specific type of drywall that made their new house, after they had lost everything, worth zero dollars. And they only discovered it right before the act of sale. My mom and dad were forced to pay two mortgages for years. It was completely unforeseen. And this was after my mom had dedicated herself to live like a true disciple, started reading Scripture, and turning to the Lord, and all of this started to happen.
It feels that way for these disciples as well. You see, these disciples were not like the last disciples. Because in last week’s passage, we saw in verses 18 through 22, there was a large crowd gathering around Jesus, and one shouts, “Lord, I’m going to go with you wherever you want to go.” You know, he’s at this Billy Graham crusade, and everybody’s standing up to go follow Jesus, and this guy’s like, “I’m going to follow You, Jesus.” And Jesus says, “You realize you have to live a life like Me if you do that? I don’t have a place for My head to lay. Are you willing to do that?” (Matt 8:20).
And then the next two, He warns them as well. He says you can’t put your family above Me (Matt 8:21–22). He tells one guy, “Let the spiritually dead be buried by the spiritually dead.” “It’s either you follow Me now or never; forget about your father on earth.” And then He says to the next person who wants to go say goodbye to his family first, “It’s either follow Me now or never.” And they walk away from Jesus.
But these twelve, they stay with Jesus. They decide they’re going to follow Him no matter what, so they get on a boat. And now they face death. Maybe these guys thought they were counting the cost when they decided to follow Jesus. They heard the warnings from Jesus: you have to be willing to give up your family, give up your comfort, and give up your security. That was last week’s message. They decided they’re going to give up their comfort, their security, and their family to follow Jesus. And now Jesus is showing them, what about giving up your life?
That’s the main point of today’s sermon: We must be disciples of Christ who face death without fear.
So, we have to be willing to jump into a boat with Jesus, go wherever He’s going, and the skies might look clear when you’re getting on that boat to follow Jesus. You think you’ve got it figured out. You’ve got your connections overseas, you’ve got churches that you’ve communicated with, you’ve got your passport, and you’ve got the latest travel gear. And all of a sudden, you’re about to get on that train, and somebody blows up the tracks. What do you do now? Do you buckle? Do you give up?
Maybe for you, you get into a marriage. You think you’ve got it figured out. You met the man of your life, the woman of your life, and y’all are ideal for each other. Y’all both love Jesus, and you’re just dedicated to making disciples through having children. And all of a sudden, an affair occurs. Do you give up on Jesus because your plans were thwarted? Or do you recognize there’s more to life than what you thought, and Jesus knows exactly where you’re headed? He sees the end of the picture, even though you do not.
Maybe you started a non-profit, and it doesn’t seem like you’re going to have enough money to keep going. God sees that water. He knew that the storm was there before you got into the boat. It doesn’t matter what it is. The question is, are you still willing to follow Him? You have to face the danger.
We Must Have Faith to Get into the Boat and Ride the Dangers of Discipleship
We already said last week we had the disciple candidates. They were charged to follow Jesus, but they backed out because of their love for the world (Matt 8:18–22). If you remember the Parable of the Four Soils (Matt 13:1–23), many want to follow Jesus. It sounds good at first. You’re at the crusade, and you see everybody walking up front, and you’re like, “Yeah, I want that for myself.” Maybe you were in a youth group, and you decided to get baptized as a kid because everybody else was doing it. Many of us are going to be like that.
These people decide to follow Jesus, and now Jesus wants to address: what about the people that actually call themselves Christian? If you think that you are a Christian just because you call yourself a Christian and you’re here at church, that does not mean you’re safe. You are only safe if you’re willing to give up your life for Him.
Jesus rebukes His disciples here not because they don’t believe. Church, what does He rebuke them for? Their little belief (Matt 8:26). Too many Christians—I mean, we have a lot of Christians in the world—will all tell you, “I believe that Jesus is God, the Son of God.” And Jesus might still rebuke you because you don’t believe enough to carry out His mission, because you don’t believe enough to do the hard work, or because you aren’t willing to do the unthinkable.
I am so grateful that the Lord brought my wife and I to this place. Right before this church called us here, the Lord Jesus put us through a financial storm that looked bleak. I thought we were about to have to start all over. He put me in that storm, and He did that so that when this church would call me to be up here—a little bitty church would call me to be up here—I would take it by faith. If the Lord had not destroyed our boat in the waters, my faith would not have been in that place. That’s the kind of faith that we all need to have. I hope that the Lord puts you through your own rocky waters to put you in that place. If He loves you, He will (Heb 12:6). It’s hard, but it’s the best place to be: to be in a place where you will trust God no matter what it looks like.
You see, I want to emphasize that following is in view here. Last week, we saw there was a disciple that said, “I will follow you” (Matt 8:19). And guess who gets in the boat now first? Jesus (v. 23). And it says in verse 23, they followed Him—the exact same word. But now they say, “We’re going to die” in verse 25. They do call on the Lord, and they ask the Lord to help them. They say, “Lord, save us!” (v. 25). Jesus does not rebuke them for praying; Jesus rebukes them for how they pray, with the fear of death in their voices. He says, “Why are you afraid?” (v. 26). Afraid of what? It says in verse 25, they’re afraid of death. That’s what Jesus rebukes them for.
So what is Jesus calling you to do? Whatever it is, He’s calling you to do it without fear of dying. Church, you recognize that every single one of you is called to do something in life that defies death. Some of you are young, and you think about getting married, and you say, “Well, I don’t want to get married. It’s too tough. We don’t have enough money.” And then you follow that trail: “Well, why are you afraid of not having enough money?” “Well, we’re going to live on the street.” “Well, why are you afraid of living on the street?” “Well, because I’m going to die.” If God calls you to get married, get married. If God calls you to start an orphanage, start an orphanage. Whatever it is, trust that the Lord is going to make it happen. You don’t have to be the pilot of the boat. You realize that, right? You just have to get in it. So, jump now and ask questions about the parachute later.
We Can Follow Jesus Into Danger Because…
All right, so with that, we can follow Jesus into danger because of—our first sub-point:
Jesus Is Creator
That’s evident from verses 26 and 27.
He said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him!” (Matthew 8:26–27, CSB)
And of course, they’re left breathless; they’re in awe and wonder, and they say, “What kind of man is this?” (Matt 8:27). Their question, “what kind,” is not a question of identity, but of nature. What kind of man has the ability to rebuke the winds and the sea, and they obey Him?
We are currently in the section of the Gospel of Matthew that seeks to depict the vastness of Christ’s authority. He has authority over demons and sickness—we have seen that already—and now we see that He has authority over nature (Matt 8:1–22). He commands the sea and the wind. That is why we can go into dangerous places.
“Lord Jesus, do not call me to the jungle, please. I do not like to sweat. I don’t like malaria. I don’t like mosquitoes.” But if He calls me to do it, I must do it. And when I fear vipers, anacondas, and tarantulas, I just remind myself of this passage: He is Lord over nature.
It says in Psalm 104:7:
At your rebuke the water fled;
at the sound of your thunder they hurried away—
And Isaiah 50:2:
Why was no one there when I came?
Why was there no one to answer when I called?
Is my arm too weak to redeem?
Or do I have no power to rescue?
Look, I dry up the sea by my rebuke;
I turn rivers into a desert;
their fish rot because of lack of water
and die of thirst.
Jesus can do this because Jesus is the Lord, ʏʜᴡʜ. He is the Creator of heaven and earth. We see that in John 1:3:
All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.
Jesus made everything. And what’s interesting is Psalm 107 is intentionally behind Matthew’s account here in Matthew 8. You see, this is what’s beautiful. Bible readers—hopefully, (1) everybody is a Bible reader in this room. (2) If you’re a Bible reader, what you have to understand is that sometimes how an author says something is just as important as what he is saying. Jesus really did get into a boat. There really was a storm. The disciples really thought they were going to die. That is a historical event. But Matthew tells this historical event with such precision that he wants you to recognize that he has Psalm 107 in the back of his mind when he writes it.
And there is a very important reason why Matthew wants you to see Psalm 107 when he tells this historical event. Psalm 107 is not in the back of the minds of Mark and Luke when they tell this event, but it is in Matthew (Mark 4:35–41, Luke 8:22–25). In Psalm 107, you see the sea, a boat, and raging waves—all the same words that you have in our story (Ps 107:23–26). You also see a plea to ʏʜᴡʜ for salvation using the same Greek word that we have here in Matthew 8 (Ps 107:28). You also see the Lord rebuking the waves (Ps 107:29). I believe the word is epitimao; it appears in both passages, and it results in men expressing wonder, thaumazo (Ps 107:30, Matt 8:27). It’s the same word in both passages.
Why would Matthew do that? Because Matthew wants you to recognize that the man who got into the boat first is ʏʜᴡʜ in the flesh. You can follow Jesus into danger because He is the Creator. Amen? He might call you to move to a place that has hurricanes. He might call you to a place that has earthquakes. He might call you into Tornado Alley. He might call you to the land of tarantulas. Follow Him no matter what, and face fear by faith because Jesus is with you.
Jesus Has Defeated Death
And not only is He the Creator, but Jesus has also defeated death. That’s the next point. We can follow Jesus into danger because Jesus has defeated death.
Just like I said before, Matthew tells this story on two levels. He’s telling you the historical event, but he’s also telling you the story in such a way that is already alluding to Jesus’ death and resurrection. First, Jesus sleeps (Matt 8:24). In Matthew, Jesus uses—or rather, Matthew uses—the word or the idea of “sleep” to allude to those who are dead but shall be resurrected. It says in Matthew 9:24, a ruler comes to Jesus and says his daughter has just died, and what does Jesus tell them? “The girl is not dead but asleep.” And then also in Matthew 27:52, it’s a different word for sleep, but it’s still the same idea: when Jesus died on the cross, it says the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. It points to the same reality used to describe Jesus here in the boat (Matt 8:24): He wakes up and rises (v. 26).
And then there’s this funny thing about Jesus being in the boat sleeping. Because it says that the waves are crashing over the boat, and there is no hull for somebody to be covered (Matt 8:24). This isn’t a yacht where you’re able to go under the deck and sleep with protection from the waves. If you’ve ever been in a flat boat—right, an aluminum flatbed boat—it’s a lot like that, trying to sleep in that thing while the waves are covering the boat. Folks, Jesus is basically being waterboarded, and He’s sleeping! What? I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could sleep while being waterboarded. But it makes perfect sense if the author is trying to intentionally foreshadow Christ’s death.
The other thing is that you’ve got to realize we are called to follow Jesus in every respect. If Jesus can sleep in the face of danger, then so should we. Do y’all see the sign that I feel is above my head right now? It says “Hypocrite.” Because when I say that, I absolutely feel like a hypocrite. We should be able to, though, have such a faith in God that we can sleep with no Trazodone, no Gabapentin, none of the other sleeping pills. We just sleep. That’s the kind of peace that Jesus walks on earth with, right up until His crucifixion. But that’s tremendous. That’s the kind of faith we’re called to have.
The disciples don’t have it, and they get rebuked for it (Matt 8:26). In their lack of faith, they just let fear get a hold of them. Does fear get a hold of you? Are you able to sleep at night? Or is your lack of sleep related to a lack of faith? That’s something we have to wrestle with. In fact, the waves are so bad that in Mark’s parallel account, they say to Him, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to die?” (Mark 4:38).
I want that kind of faith. I want to make disciples in such a way that the people who are following me go, “What are you doing, Josh? You’re going to die!” Is Jesus telling them they have little faith because He wants them to know, “I’m going to protect you from physical death”? No, He’s not. Jesus is not telling you, “Follow Me, and you will never physically die.” Let that sink in. Jesus is calling you to death. He says if you’re going to follow Me, you must pick up your cross and die to yourself (Matt 16:24). Jesus calling disciples is not a call to comfort; it’s a death sentence. But it’s a death to the world as you know it. Because they call on Jesus, He rises, and He calms the storm as the Lord ʏʜᴡʜ does (Matt 8:26). And it results in a peace that follows Him.
We must understand that when we follow Jesus, we are called to follow Him in a way that gives us peace on the inside, even in the midst of danger. Notice that Jesus rebukes them before He gives them calm and peace (v. 26). This tells you they were supposed to have calmness in the midst of the danger, not just after it. Do you? Do you have calm and peace in the midst of danger, fear, or chaos—whatever He’s calling you to? Have that peace now.
After rising, Jesus calms the storm. But Church, we must understand that we are called to face danger because we are in a spiritual battle. We are called to fight demons (Eph 6:12). Do you realize that? You are in a war. The enemy is after you. The more you turn down the enemy, the stronger he will come after you. If you are young, he will come after you with sexual temptation. If you are old, he is going to come after you with bitterness. He’s going to make you think thoughts like, “Look what happened to you. You really want to cling to this King? He hates you. Look at all the pain that He’s made you go through, all the loved ones you lost.” If you’re young, he’s going to tell you, “See? God only wants to restrict you. Don’t you want freedom?” This is all war, and the demons are constantly whispering in your ear. What are you going to do with it?
Jesus does not say that He was going to protect you from dying. But He does have a promise. Jesus tells Martha in John 11:25–26:
“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
And so now, Church, I ask you: do you believe this? Do you believe that even if you die, you will live? Because if you do, you will be fearless on mission. You will be willing to go to places that are dangerous.
One of my favorite pastors that discipled me used to go into the Ninth Ward, pass out bread, and share the Gospel. If you don’t know, the Ninth Ward is one of the most dangerous places in America. You do not go to the Ninth Ward, particularly if you are white. It is almost certainly a death sentence; people do not come out alive. They have made documentaries about the Ninth Ward. And this white pastor would go there, pass out bread, and share the Gospel. One day, these men were approaching him, and fear welled up a little bit. And then all of a sudden, somebody came up and said, “Don’t touch him. He’s a good one.” That’s just the Lord. But the pastor recognized that he was going into a place of death, and that did not stop him.
We must not be afraid to go to dangerous places and talk to dangerous people. Don’t say, “That’s for somebody else.” That might be for you. What are you going to do with it?
Let’s go to the Lord.
Father, I thank You for reminding us that we are equipped and called to do dangerous and hard things. I pray that You would convict every heart in here to be willing to do that, Lord, including me. You might be calling me to lead this Church to go into dangerous places. I pray that this Church would be filled with great faith, knowing that You are Creator and that You are the Savior from death, and that we would be willing to do that no matter what the call. I pray that You give us great strength to do so, Lord, knowing that we do not have to fear death because we will live at the end. Help us to give You glory by our bodies and be living sacrifices (Rom 12:1). Help us to be fearless by faith. In Jesus’ name, amen.