“But the men marveled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him!” (Matthew 8:27).
Waves large enough to cover a ship on a small lake in a short time could only have been generated by a tremendously powerful wind, and such a wind would require a mighty complex of forces in the atmosphere, triggered by the sun itself. Furthermore, even when the wind dies down, the waves will continue for a time. But suddenly both ceased at once, and “there was a great calm” (v.26). No known natural force could have produced such a phenomenon, yet there it was.
A man had simply spoken a word: “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39). How could He control the sea? “The sea is His, and He made it” (Psalm 95:5)—that is how! And what about the stormy wind? God Himself “bringeth the wind out of His treasuries” (Psalm 135:7), even when need be, the “stormy wind fulfilling His word” (Psalm 148:8).
God can use the storms of life to cause us to call on Him for deliverance. “For He commendeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. . . . Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still” (Psalm 107:25,28,29).
What manner of man can do such things? Only the God/Man, Jesus Christ. He is the omnipotent, living word, the “Creator of the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 40:28). It is He by whom “were all things created,” and it therefore follows that “by Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16,17). “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
If this eternal word (who was “made flesh” and was now sleeping in a small boat on the Sea of Galilee) could speak the mighty cosmos into being, it is no great thing for Him to speak peace to a stormy sea or to bring rest to His loved ones in their times of turmoil and fear. HMM
