If you will turn with me to the prophecy of Nahum, just the one verse that we have been considering: Nahum 1:3.
The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no means clear the guilty;
The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm,
And the clouds are the dust of His feet.
Then turn to 1 Peter 1, from verse 3.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
Unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,
Who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials,
That the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ:
Whom not having seen ye love; on Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory:
Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.
And then I would like to add to that, in Luke 22, from verse 31.
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat:
But I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not; and do thou, when once thou hast turned again, establish thy brethren.
And he said unto Him, Lord, with Thee I am ready to go both to prison and to death.
And He said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, until thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest Me.
Then verse 54:
And they seized Him, and led Him away, and brought Him into the high priest’s house. But Peter followed afar off.
And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the court, and had sat down together, Peter sat in the midst of them.
And a certain maid, seeing him as he sat in the light of the fire, and looking steadfastly upon him, said, This man also was with Him.
But he denied, saying, Woman, I know Him not.
And after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou also art one of them. But Peter said, Man, I am not.
And after the space of about one hour another confidently affirmed, saying, Of a truth this man also was with Him; for he is a Galilaean.
But Peter said, Man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew.
And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how that He said unto him, Before the cock crow this day, thou shalt deny Me thrice.
And he went out, and wept bitterly.
Finally, in Mark 6, verse 45:
And straightway He constrained His disciples to enter into the boat, and to go before Him unto the other side to Bethsaida, while He Himself sendeth the multitude away.
And after He had taken leave of them, He departed into the mountain to pray.
And when even was come, the boat was in the midst of the sea, and He alone on the land.
And seeing them distressed in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them, about the fourth watch of the night He cometh unto them, walking on the sea; and He would have passed by them:
But they, when they saw Him walking on the sea, supposed that it was a ghost, and cried out;
For they all saw Him, and were troubled. But He straightway spake with them, and saith unto them, Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.
And He went up unto them into the boat; and the wind ceased: and they were sore amazed in themselves;
For they understood not concerning the loaves, but their heart was hardened.
Could we just have a further word of prayer?
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful for this time that we have been in Your presence, sensing that You are here, worshipping You, and opening up our hearts in love and adoration.
And now, Lord, we come to Your Word, and we need You both for the speaking of Your Word and the hearing of it. We know, Lord, that You have provided an anointing of grace and power for just that.
So into that anointing, grace, and power, so dearly won for us at Calvary by our Lord Jesus, we stand by faith.
Dear Lord, make it a reality this morning, both in the speaking and in the hearing. We shall be careful to give You all the praise and the glory. Hear us, O Lord, for we ask this in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
It is a little too late to go over what we have said already, but it is this one little phrase in the prophecy of Nahum:
The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm,
And the clouds are the dust of His feet.
Quite an extraordinary revelation, really. We tend to think that if the Lord is present, everything will be clear, shining, and full of sunshine. We do not imagine that the Lord would be in a whirlwind—a tornado. What a thing for the Lord to be in.
It is so destructive, so powerful. In a single moment of time, it can blow away whole places.
I remember speaking some years ago. I was asked to speak to a whole group of Southern Baptist ministers in Louisville, Kentucky. I remember that when I was speaking to them, they were quite hostile.
I found it quite remarkable. I almost wondered why I had gone. They did not believe in prayer. They did not believe the Lord Jesus was coming—Southern Baptist ministers. I was so shocked. I had always thought Southern Baptists were fundamentalists from the feet to the head, and from the head to the feet.
So I was very surprised to find that, when you got amongst ministers, many of them did not believe even what we think is normal among Southern Baptists.
But there was one man whose face shone the whole time. Afterwards, he came up and said, “Don’t be put off. Poor things, they haven’t had any experience.”
So I said, “Oh, you have had an experience of the Holy Spirit, have you?”
“Oh,” he said, “not only that, but I have had a miracle. Did you know of the great tornado that went through here about two years ago?”
I said, “Yes, I did, because Mrs. Sparks was actually there at the time. When she came back, she told us about this terrible thing—three days without electricity, and all the rest of it.”
He said, “Well, I was in the church, in the vestry, and suddenly there was a noise such as I had never heard. I dived under this oak desk. The whole church”—he called it the church; never mind—“began to move. The whole thing went up, and then fell.”
“They dug me out after so many hours,” he said, “and I was under a solid oak desk.”
So he said, “Then I realised that miracles were still God’s business.”
And it is so that sometimes, you see, the Lord came to him in a whirlwind. He was a Baptist minister who had no real experience of the Lord. He was not alive to the Lord. But when the Lord came in that whirlwind, the Lord fully was in it for him.
He came out of it with a new experience of the Lord. A little later, he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and that meant a whole new chapter for the fellowship he was leading.
I only mention it because it seems so amazing to us that the Lord should be in a whirlwind and in a storm. That He might come up behind it, we could accept. That He might even go before it, we could accept. That He could be in it—that is very hard for us to believe.
So I spoke on the first night about the nations: whirlwind and storm in the nations, and the fact that the Lord has a purpose, and He is going to fulfil it. It will be on time. It will not be late. It will not be before the appointed time, nor after it. He is going to fulfil it.
But I will say no more about that. We talked about that on the first night.
Last night, I talked about it in relation to the church. The Lord has sometimes come in a whirlwind in order to blow people out of something false and compromised. He has sometimes used storms to do it.
When it comes down even to an assembly of born-again believers who know something of the Lord, there is an evil day. When that evil day comes, you cannot stop it. You cannot avert it. You cannot abort it.
And in that evil day, everything is blown to pieces. It is all confusion. You cannot see the Lord for the clouds. You can hardly believe that the clouds are the dust of His feet. In other words, He is there, and He is actually working through it.
In that time, we are all set to sixes and sevens. We are brother against brother and sister against sister—everybody. It is a time when all the eyes get off the Lord and get onto one another.
It does not matter who we are; we find faults everywhere. Actually, that is true anyway. When everything is going gloriously, the faults are all there, the weaknesses are all there; you just do not see them.
But in the evil day, every fault and every weakness comes out, as it were, into the open. If we want to fight, and we think we can do so, the Lord, in one sense, leaves us to it.
I have always been a believer in this: when you get two people fighting each other in the work of the Lord, the Lord says, “Get on with it. Fight.” But when one person dies in it, the Lord says, “I will take your place.”
Then you live on a collision course with the Lord. God help anyone who is on a collision course with Him.
Well, anyway, now I said this morning that I want to talk about the individual.
There is a very great danger, when we see what the church is, that we begin to put less and less emphasis upon the individual. But any assembly—its spiritual character, its spiritual power, its spiritual effectiveness—depends upon the individual working of every part of the body.
When you have five people working and ninety spectators, you will not have effectiveness. When you have twenty people effective and two hundred who are seat-warmers, you will not have the same effectiveness.
You can have ten people with real character and the rest are siphons, if you know what I mean.
So many assemblies and so much Christian work are filled with people who are like tape recorders: they take it all in and put it all out. But there is no character. It is something like machinery.
But when God can get a company with a large number of them who really have experience of the Lord, who have their own personal knowledge of the Lord, to whom the Word of God has been applied in their own situations—at home, at work, in their own life—you have a company that has spiritual character.
You have an assembly that has spiritual power. The prayer meeting becomes a powerhouse.
That is why, in my estimation, when the Lord sees an assembly or a work that really has understanding of the work of God and real revelation about the church, but He begins to see people hiding in the crowd, He comes in a whirlwind.
In that moment, when the fellowship in which we hide breaks up or goes down, and all kinds of things we never thought would ever happen happen, then suddenly we are individuals again. Do you understand?
Then we have to think, “Do I really believe what I believe?”
That is the whole point that I want to talk about this morning: this question of the individual.
You remember the tabernacle? Do you remember how all the boards of the tent of meeting and the holy of holies were individual boards? Do you remember that every single one of them sat on two feet?
And do you remember that a bar went right through the lot of them, binding them together?
In other words, it is a picture of heavenly things. It is a picture of the house of God. It is a picture of the church of God. But every one of the boards is standing on its own two feet, and then bound together in the house of the Lord.
The first thing I want to talk about this morning is proving what is of God in you.
Dear Peter says in 1 Peter 4—we did not read that—1 Peter 4:12. Listen; I will read it to you:
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you:
But insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of His glory also ye may rejoice with exceeding joy.
If ye are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are ye; because the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God resteth upon you.
He goes on:
For let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or a meddler in other men’s matters:
But if a man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God in this name.
For the time is come for judgment to begin at the house of God: and if it begin first at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God?
And if the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?
Wherefore let them also that suffer according to the will of God commit their souls in well-doing unto a faithful Creator.
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you.
Thank God, we are not all the time in trial. But we should expect times when the Lord comes like a tornado. We should expect times when the Lord comes as a storm.
Because it is in those times that the Lord proves whether what we believe up here is really in our heart.
You know, we can all say that we believe the Word of God, which I believe we do. But it is only when the trial comes, when we hardly know where we are or what we are doing, that the Holy Spirit takes some Scripture and immediately it becomes yours.
You know what I mean? You have known that Scripture all your life, some of you from Sunday school upwards. It is wonderful. It is God’s Word. You believe it, but it is not yours.
But in that moment when the storm hits you, you discover that the Lord has His way in it. You do not know where to turn. You are in distress; you are afflicted. But then into your heart the Holy Spirit breathes a word you know, and in that moment, that word becomes yours.
I remember—I may have told you this story before—years ago, when I was convalescing in Lady Ogle’s home, a beautiful home in Kent overlooking Ashdown Forest.
I thought it was such a beautiful home—everything about it. Those poor cats from the whole estate were not allowed in the gardens or the home. They were not allowed to have a cat, poor things, because she loved birds. She did not want a single cat going around killing birds, you see.
It was like heaven on earth, really, in many ways. But I remember sitting in a drawing room, a magnificent room with magnificent furniture. I saw this little plain wooden plaque on the wall, and it said, “My peace I give unto you.”
I thought, “Well, that is pretty trite.” I thought to myself—I did not say it to her—“I think she could have found a deeper word to put on the wall.”
A bit later, some days later, we were talking, and I said, “Well, why did you put that little plain piece of wood up there on the wall?”
“Oh,” she said, “years ago I was in terrible distress. I felt as if I really did not know the Lord. Something had come into my life; it blew everything to pieces. I just did not know where the Lord was. I did not know where I was.”
“And in the midst of this distress, which went on for quite a few days, suddenly one day the Holy Spirit breathed into my heart:
Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you.”
She said, “In a single flash, I understood. The peace He left with me is the peace of sins forgiven, which He never knew. That is why He did not call it My peace. He did not need that kind of peace. He never sinned.”
“Peace I leave with you—it is your birthright because He has died in your place. But when He said, ‘My peace I give unto you,’ it was the peace He had in Gethsemane when He said:
Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.
“It was the peace He had on the cross, when He had said:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
“And then He said:
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.”
You know, transformed. And I felt so dreadful. I thought, “Oh, I am so thankful I never said that trite little thing on the wall.”
You see, it was trite to me because I had never seen it. It was just the kind of thing I saw in Christian homes, and I thought, “Not here as well.”
But for her, it was not just a little Scriptural saying plonked on the wall. It meant something. Actually, it was Amy Carmichael who herself had painted the words on the wood, for she was a great friend of Lady Ogle.
So, you see what happens when it becomes yours. This fiery trial—do not think it strange. The Lord is proving something. He is proving what there really is of Himself in you: how much is just up here, and how much is here.
It is the way the Lord brings us to a place where He means something to us, where He can produce in us spiritual character, of which there is a famine.
We can run around being excited about miracles, and I have seen so many of all kinds. We can get all excited about miracles. They are the acts of the Lord.
But the ways of the Lord—that is something in a different dimension. You can see the acts of the Lord and marvel and be excited about them. They are dramatic. They are sensational. They sort of encourage your faith.
But the ways of the Lord are something altogether different. Many, many Christians know the acts of the Lord. Few understand the ways.
When you are in this kind of process, it is so marvellous because, at the revelation of His glory, you may rejoice with exceeding joy.
What is the whole point of this whirlwind, this tornado, this storm? It is that the Lord may prove what is really of Himself in you.
And then, at the revelation of His glory, there will be no tears on your path except tears of joy that you are there. You will rejoice with exceeding joy that in the whirlwind He did something; in the storm, He did something in your life.
He made real His Word in you.
I could give you many other examples from my own experience and from others of how the Word of the Lord, which we believe and know is of God, as it were given to us by the Spirit of God, is yet somehow not in us.
When the Lord makes His Word real to you, it becomes yours in a way that is eternal. Somehow, it is yours. I cannot explain what I am saying, really. It is yours. It is not just in the Book. It is not just absolute truth. It is yours.
It actually becomes flesh and blood—but never through sunshine. Always through the whirlwind and through the storm.
Then I take you, in the same letter of Peter, to 1 Peter 1, which we have read together. In the old King James, it is “the trial of your faith, being more precious than of gold that perisheth, may be found unto praise and honour and glory at the coming of the Messiah.”
This is quite amazing to me, because the word translated in the old English version as “trial” is not a good word. When you have a trial, you are seeking to find out whether something is true or not true.
If you say “the trying of your faith,” it is, “Well, is it there or is it not there? Do you have living faith, or do you not have living faith?” Do you understand?
My version, which is the American Standard Version of 1901—are you amazed that I use the American Standard Version?—has “the proof of your faith.” But that also is misleading. It is the proving of your faith.
Let me read it again:
That the proving of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The proving of your faith. The Lord never puts you into a storm if He knows there is not living faith there. In other words, if your faith is so weak, He will not put you into the storm. He will wait until at least you have grown a little more.
Now listen, I will say something about it in one moment, but Peter was speaking out of his experience. When the Lord Jesus spoke to him about what was going to happen—his fall, we might say—He said, “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.”
I would have thought three denials with oaths were a pretty clear indication of the failure of faith. Actually, it was the failure of academic faith. But the real faith, which was the gift of God, was under the surface, and the Lord Jesus knew it.
He said, “I have prayed that your God-given faith—the faith I am putting into My own work—may not fail.” It did not. One look from the Lord Jesus was all that was required, and Peter wept his way back to the Lord.
It is very, very interesting, this thing: the proving of your faith. The Lord is not thinking of putting you into a storm so that you are blown to pieces. He puts you into a storm to blow away what is not of Himself.
Second-hand Christianity, third-hand Christianity, fourth-hand Christianity—it is deadly.
The Lord is only interested in original Christianity. In other words, He is only interested in what has been produced in your life by His Spirit.
Everything else the storm will blow away.
The wonderful thing is that, if there is somewhere in your life that which is the work of the Spirit of God, that kind of faith will survive. The Lord has proved it. He has actually proved it in the storm.
You have lost everything else, but not what is truly of Himself. Now the Lord has got you where you ought to have been from the beginning. He has got you on a basis of reality. He is now the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
Do you understand what I am trying to say? The end of the storm is that you have something more valuable, more pure than gold. Very simply, it has come through the storm.
Then again, I could turn you to another Scripture, 2 Corinthians 1. I will read from verse 8:
For we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning our affliction which befell us in Asia, that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life:
Yea, we ourselves have had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead:
Who delivered us out of so great a death, and will deliver: on Whom we have set our hope that He will also still deliver us.
Here was a storm. These men were servants of God. They were actually fulfilling their calling. They were travelling, I imagine, where they did not want to be. It would have been much easier, I imagine, to have stayed in a much more comfortable place.
But here they were. You would think the Lord would shine out of a clear sky upon them. You would think that the Lord would do something very special. But instead, we hear, “We despaired even of life.”
He says in verse 8, “We would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning our affliction. We were weighed down exceedingly beyond our power.” Now the Lord does not surely do that, does He? Really weigh us down beyond our power?
Actually, Paul was, if we believe the only account we have of his size and shape, red-haired and short. In fact, the only record says he was bow-legged. But he was above all a tank.
Those of you who know anything about temperamental people know this. From beginning to end, he was a tank. Once he got something, he went right through. The Lord knew it and thought, “This man, once he gets going, will do a whole lot himself.”
So every now and again, this faithful man, who had lost really everything and laid down his life, the Lord had to say, “A storm. We are going to have to have the whirlwind come on him.”
It is the only thing that will preserve him and deliver him from his own power, his own energy, his own talents, his own brain.
“Weighted down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life. We had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead.”
Dear brothers and sisters, all of God’s work begins with resurrection. It is all, if you know what I mean, on the other side of the grave. That is something that the natural man cannot get to naturally.
In other words, if you have to minister in your own power, with your own talent, you have to be on the other side of the cross. Do you understand what I mean?
So the Lord says He has a way of dealing with this. Do you want to serve the Lord? If you are a housewife, do you really want to serve the Lord? Do you want your family to be an expression of the Lord Jesus—a home where the Lord Jesus is at home?
Those of you who are businessmen, do you really want to have a testimony in business? It is not easy to have a testimony in business. Do you really want the Lord to be seen in your life, in business? Do you want to be a witness to Him in your business?
Those of us who are called to the ministry, one way or another, how can we really speak the Word of God? The church is cluttered with people who speak the Word of God, but there is no power. Nothing ever happens. It is up here, not here.
I remember somebody saying to me, “I went to Bible college, or theological seminary, for five years.” Oh no, I think it was four years. Four years is enough—enough, unfortunately, to kill living faith. But it does not kill the person, unfortunately.
That is exactly what the Apostle Paul is talking about when he says, “We ourselves, my co-workers, have been called by the Lord, and something hit us beyond our power.” That is saying something with the Apostle: beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired of life itself.
But he says, “We had the sentence of death within ourselves.” So that is what the Lord was doing: that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead.
If all the work of the Lord is on the other side of the grave, if you understand what I mean—if it begins with resurrection power and resurrection life—then we have to not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.
Then it is a walk of faith, and it becomes something alive. There may be death in you because you have the sentence of death within yourself, but to those who hear, it is all life.
Does it make sense?
Then you can comfort people. You can encourage people with the comfort you yourself have received when you were pressed beyond measure.
It is very easy to say to God’s people, “Try to encourage them; try to comfort them.” But when you have not been in a situation that this person may be in, how can you comfort them?
But when you have been in that kind of situation, where everything seems to be in the hands of the enemy himself, and then the Spirit of God encouraged you in it—when the Spirit of God comforted you—for if you read in the earlier verses, you will see that He is the God of all comfort.
Then He comes to you, and now you have something to give those who are in trouble. In the way the Lord has spoken to you, and the way the Lord has made His Word live to you—encouraging you, comforting you, strengthening you, correcting you—you can now pass it on to others.
One person can speak words, and another person can speak the same words, yet they live in the hearer when spoken by the other person. What is the difference? One person is speaking as theology, and the other person is speaking out of experience.
The proving of your faith.
Then a second thing I would like just to touch on—I have already said a little about it—is what we have in Luke 22. What Peter wrote about the proving of your faith in his first letter came out of experience. He actually knew from his own experience what the proving of faith really was.
Peter was so special. I have often heard Peter, if you know what I mean, run down in the pulpit: “You know the kind of thing—gorgeous man, arrogant, impetuous, always putting his foot in it.”
As we say, opening his mouth and putting his foot in it. Actually, if you look carefully at the record, you will discover that all the others felt exactly the same, but Peter was the spokesman. He had no fear.
Peter was a rugged kind of person. He had no fear, whereas the others kept their big mouths shut and never got blamed.
You see it all in Christian work. Someone says something straight out, and the others feel it; but when it comes to the crunch, they sew up their mouths and let brother so-and-so get all the trouble.
The fact of the matter is that Peter was a very straightforward, very honest man, but he also had an idea that he could do it. It is as simple as that.
He had no idea that his Christianity—if you know what I am talking about—his discipleship, was self-manufactured. It was the product of his own nature.
He heard the Lord, and then he took it in for himself and, as it were, made himself what he felt he ought to be.
Oh, this was the man who said:
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus said, “Simon Bar-jona, that is not something that is you. That has been revealed to you by My Father who is in heaven.”
I mean, there were some very good things about Peter. He did follow the Lord.
Peter actually had a self-manufactured Christianity and a self-manufactured Christian service. There was no doubt about his loyalty, no doubt about his aims, no doubt about his determination to follow the Lord—but it was not the Lord.
Now, you might say, “I do not understand what he is talking about.” Oh, you will. When the tornado hits you, as it will if you go on with the Lord, you will understand what I am talking about.
Because in that moment that Peter said, “I am ready to go to prison with You and to die with You,” Jesus said, “Before the cock crows once this day, you will have denied Me three times.”
Now Peter must have been dumbfounded. “How could the Lord misjudge me in such a way? That is absolute nonsense. I mean what I say.”
And then the Lord said to him, “Listen, Simon, Simon. Satan hath asked to have you.”
Thank God Satan could not just take him. He had to get permission from God. But Peter, by speaking too quickly, had exposed himself.
Satan had gone to God, believe it or not, and said to the Father, “You let me have him. I will sift him.”
C. T. Studd said the devil was a great servant of God, because every time the Lord wanted to do something, He used the devil sometimes to do it. Do you understand what I am trying to say?
So the Father said, “You do it.” And Satan did it.
Here is the interesting thing: Satan got the chaff, and God got the wheat.
Satan was the agent, but he divided the chaff from the wheat. Great.
So much of our Christian life and Christian service is actually so much chaff, but we do not know it. Buried within it, deep within it, is the real thing. But when the storm comes, the chaff is blown away and the wheat remains.
To me, it is amazing. Why does Satan do this, when he knows every single time he gets the chaff and God gets the wheat? It says something for the pride and arrogance of Satan: he honestly believes that he can frustrate the work of God.
Anyway, I hope you understand what I am trying to say. Peter’s whole Christian life collapsed in a single moment of time. Can you believe it? This man who said, “Thou art the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” denied his Lord three times. The other Gospels say, with oaths.
There could not have been anything more devastating than what happened to Peter that night.
Here was this great rugged, masculine type—a kind of spiritual Schwarzenegger—and a little servant girl, probably just in her mid-teens, says, “Oh, you are one of them.”
Instantly, the man collapsed.
It is amazing what women can do to men. It is amazing. I mean it.
I mean, that little painted woman, with her nails beautifully done, brilliantly scarlet, and her eyes with mascara—a tiny little thing that the wind could almost blow away. Her name was Jezebel.
All she had to do was write a little note and send it to Elijah, and the man fled for his life. This great rugged man. You have only to see the country in which Elijah lived to know that the man was an incredible man.
He fled for his life. You remember the story, do you not?
Do you remember how the Lord did not try to stop him? Not once did the Lord try to stop him. In fact, the Lord said to a couple of angels, “Get down there and cook his breakfast.”
He says he does not want to live, and the Lord helped him go in the wrong way.
He was sleeping under a juniper tree. The angel cooked his breakfast and cooked his supper, and in the strength of that food he went forty days and forty nights. It is an unbelievable story, is it not?
The Lord never once tried to stop him. I imagine the Lord saying, “Do not try stopping him. The poor man is so churned up and so upset; the thing is, we are getting the other end.”
When he finally got to the very southern tip of Sinai, then the Lord asked him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
Marvellous, is it not? It was a little woman who sent him on his journey in the wrong direction. Who could believe such a thing?
This man had seen four hundred prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, and the great contest with such a triumph before the whole people of Israel. Before this one little painted wisp of a woman, he fled for his life.
Well, the same with Peter. This little girl—I do not think she would have had painted nails or mascara or anything like that—just a dear little girl. All she had to say was, “You are one of them,” and the man collapsed.
Then again, some servant—I do not know who he was—some fellow came and said the same thing, and then another one. Three times he said it.
As he was denying the Lord the third time, the cock crew. Instantly into Peter’s heart came the words of the Lord Jesus.
It says something remarkable: Jesus just looked. He did not need to say anything. He never spoke a word. He just looked.
When Peter’s eyes and the Lord’s eyes met together, suddenly Peter realised. Judas wept himself into suicide, but Peter wept himself back to the Lord.
You know, in all this our service for God—it is a sad thing if we do not have a whirlwind and a storm. Because then we go on with our natural energy, with academic understanding, and with everything else; and it is not really the Lord, and we ourselves are deceived.
I imagine Peter, for the rest of his life, thanked God for the proving of his faith. For deeper than his denial was a God-given faith.
When this storm came, this whirlwind hit him; it blew everything in his life away and left him with only what God had given him: living faith. Now he was on another level, on another basis.
Anyway, I mention it all because I think it is so tremendous. And then I must finish. Today I can see the clock.
Did you notice that Scripture in Mark that we read together? Interestingly, there is another story. I give both of them because they are so interesting. We only read one of them—in Mark 4.
Both the stories, of course, liberals tell us are the same story that got warped, and some foolish scribe shoved them in together. I do not think so at all.
In the first story, you have a boat, the disciples, Jesus, and a storm. In the second story, you have a boat, the disciples, Jesus not in the boat this time, and a storm.
In that first instance, you remember Jesus got into the boat and went fast asleep. We are often told that this was because of His humanity. You see, He was a human being just like us, and He was weary.
I do not believe it. I have no doubt about the humanity of the Lord Jesus—no doubt that He was subject, like we are, to weariness and other things. But I cannot accept that He did not wake up in a storm.
I believe He sat there with His eyes closed.
Do not say that this does not happen, because I remember Mr. Sparks. I remember on one or two occasions when he did not want to see a visitor, and I was in the room, he shut his eyes and said, “Do not say anything.”
They would say, “Oh, he is asleep,” and they would say, “He is asleep.” I did not dare say yes, but I sort of just looked. Out they went, and then his one eye would open.
So I believe that the Lord—I am not saying He was being deceitful—but I believe that He was doing something as a means of instruction. He looked as if He was fast asleep.
The dear old disciples said, “Oh, He is so tired.” Then this storm hit the boat.
By the way, those of you who have been to Israel will have seen the Lake of Galilee. People who have been there say, “Oh, that is so peaceful. How could there be storms where boats sank?”
But the things that hit Galilee are called whirlwinds. A whirlwind comes down the hills and mountains, hits the sea, and stirs it into a great whirlpool.
Jesus was in the boat. He was asleep. The disciples said, “Oh, poor thing, He is really tired. Do not disturb Him.” They bailed out water, bailed out water.
I do not know who it was who finally got tired of the whole thing. “Look, we forgot to tell Him. Maybe He can do something. We are going to go down.”
So they went and shook Him and said, “Do You not care? We are about to go down.”
The Lord got up. He saw the panic-stricken disciples, went to the bow of the boat, I suppose, and He said, “Be still.”
Instantly the storm stopped. Of course, the disciples thought, “This is absolutely wonderful. Who is He, that He can speak a word—not a long thing, but just a word—and the whole thing is over?”
It is so wonderful in our lives when the Lord steps into a storm and stops it. The Lord is so sensitive and so thoughtful to His children that, when we start to panic, He knows there is no way we are going to learn anything.
So He says, and it is gone. Then we say, “Ah, it was a miracle. It was a miracle.”
You have learned something. You have learned how great the Lord is, how authoritative the Lord is, how He can stop a storm in an instant. You have learned something that you had not learned before.
Now, I know some people think I am heretical on this matter, but I have suspected for many, many years that the second story is the same thing, but not the same time. It is another storm, another incident on the sea.
This time Jesus said, “Well, they did not learn the last time. This time, I am not getting in the boat. I am going to give them another lesson like this.”
So He stayed up and went up and said, “I am going to pray.” They all got into the boat without the Lord.
He said, “I will meet you on the other side.” They knew He had His own ways of doing things. How He was going to get round to meet them on the other side, I suppose they might have wondered. But they had been with Him long enough to know that if He said He was going to meet them on the other side, somehow, miraculously, He would be there.
A huge storm blew up. In the other Gospel, it tells us that they were afraid because suddenly they saw a figure moving in the spray, the huge wind, and the great waves. They were rowing so hard against the wind, and they thought it was a ghost.
You know, we are all very superstitious when it comes to it. They thought, “It is a sign. It is a sign. Someone has come from the underworld. We are all going down.”
But Peter—one of the other Gospels says—said, “No, I think it is Jesus.” He called out in the roar of the storm, “Jesus, is it You?”
Back through the storm came the voice of Jesus: “Yes, it is Me.”
Then Peter said, “If it is You, tell me to come to You.”
And Jesus said, “Come.”
Then Peter got over the side of the ship, put his feet down on the water, and started walking. He never once thought to himself, “What am I doing?”
He had never been to Bible school to learn how to walk on water. It is incredible. He began to do the impossible.
Of course, some Bible critics, including some theologians, tell us—one of them said it in my hearing—that there are potholes in the shelves on the Lake of Galilee, and Peter was actually walking in shallow water. When he fell, he fell into a pothole, and Jesus sort of yanked him up.
It is a bit silly, really. How was the boat going down in such shallow water? They do not think, you know. It gets incredible. The limitations of intelligence are incredible.
Only living faith releases you from the bondage of intelligence.
I heard another one say, “Of course Elijah was on Mount Carmel, and we know there are benzine wells on Mount Carmel. He was clever. That water he was pouring into the trench was not water at all; it was benzine.”
In question time, I was only a kid then—well, you know what I mean by kid—I said, “Excuse me, where did the fire come from?”
“Fire?” he said. “A fire?”
I said, “You know, the fire that came down.”
He said, “You have never seen fire lifting up water—benzine. It licks it up.”
“Well,” I said, “where did the fire come from?”
“Fire?” he said.
As if he had never thought about it. I said, “Maybe it was a cigarette that Elijah was smoking.”
It is so stupid. These wonderful answers to miracles are so stupid that the only way you can answer them is by that kind of comment.
Now let me just say something. I believe Jesus did not get into that boat. When Jesus said, “Come,” Peter saw the Lord, Peter heard the Lord, and he did the impossible.
He walked on a wind-whipped sea. The wind was so colossal, so noisy, that it is amazing. But somewhere, as he walked on the water, a wave came up and he could not see the Lord.
In that moment he thought, “What am I doing? I am walking on water. Am I dreaming? Is this real?” In that moment, he began to sink.
And Jesus said, “Why didst thou doubt?”
Now listen: what is the lesson?
To have the Lord stop a storm in your life is wonderful. It leaves you with an understanding of His authority, His greatness, and His power. It does not do anything to you.
But when you walk on a storm-tossed sea and learn how to walk on a storm-tossed sea, this is another thing altogether. You will never again be afraid of a storm.
You have learned how, with the Lord Jesus, through living faith that comes by seeing Him, hearing Him, and obeying Him, you can walk through a storm-tossed sea. It cannot destroy you.
That, I say, is a great lesson. Out of that will come so much for every one of us if we learn this thing.
You will have a knowledge of the Lord that you could not get in a Bible school or in a Bible study. You will have an experience of the Lord now, a knowledge of the Lord, that is absolutely real and absolutely direct.
It does not mean that you will not sometimes fear, but you know that somewhere in this storm there is the Lord, and the Lord is saying to you, “Come. Follow Me, even in the storm.”
Do you understand?
May the Lord help us and bless us. May we learn in a way that we have never learned before that His way—the way of the Lord—is in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.
Shall we pray?
Lord, we all need to learn lessons from You. But Lord, our prayer this morning is that You will make this a living reality in every one of our lives.
Help us, Lord. We do not ask for any experience that will take us through a kind of destruction. But Lord, You know us, and You know when the time has come that something has to be done to divide the chaff from the wheat.
Beloved Lord, our prayer is that we may learn how to trust You, how to follow You, and how to do the impossible.
Hear us then, O Lord, and make these little times we have had together a very real meeting with Yourself.
We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.