Jesus’s Command Is Enough, Part 2
David W Palmer
(Matthew 8:18–27 NKJV) And when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave a command to depart to the other side. ... {23} Now when He got into a boat, His disciples followed Him. {24} And suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea, so that the boat was covered with the waves. But He was asleep. {25} Then His disciples came to Him and awoke Him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” {26} But He said to them, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. {27} So the men marveled, saying, “Who can this be, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?”
Jesus’s youthful—but perhaps naïve—disciples agreed to go to the next level in their apprenticeship when they followed him into the boat. These new trainees had already been through phase 1: you watch me. They had also received their first round of classroom instruction, and now they were beginning phase 2: we do it together. This had been going well while on dry ground, with Jesus accessible and active in front of them. But now, he had given them a command to carry out while he was asleep: cross over in a crowded, unstable boat through stormy seas to a demonically guarded destination.
They no longer had his physical form to follow and observe; they only had his word to obey. Many today would love Jesus to come, appear personally and physically before them, and lead them in the flesh. But he already told us …
(John 16:7 GWT) “However, I am telling you the truth: It’s good for you that I’m going away. If I don’t go away, the helper won’t come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”
Without Jesus’s physical presence, we learn to trust what he trusted: the living word he received by revelation from heaven and the Holy Spirit. After all, he couldn’t see his Father physically, but he loved him, fellowshipped with him, did what he saw with him in the spirit, and obeyed his [somewhat illogical] commands. We need to learn the lifestyle he lived. In our case, we receive the word in meetings, in worship, on the mountaintop, or during our devotions, etc. But then we take that living word of God to heart where it can grow to harvest, and then we can act on it in faith.
We note that when they yielded to fear and panic, Jesus said to them, “O you of little faith.” They had received a word directly from God, but they didn’t mix it with faith. To Jesus, this response was familiar from Israel’s history:
(Hebrews 4:2 APE) “… but the word did not benefit those who heard, because it was not joined with faith by those who heard it.”
Even the all-powerful, resurrected, living word of God does not benefit if not mixed with faith by those who hear him. This was at the heart of what Jesus wanted to impart to his apprentices: if you have received a word from God, all you need is faith in it for it to do the impossible. In truth, it’s not Jesus’s physical presence that does the impossible; it’s the words he speaks (which are anointed and empowered by the Holy Spirit), and which are received in the spirit (John 6:63). The living word is the focal point of the whole kingdom and its expansionary wars on earth:
(Matthew 11:12 DKJV) “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven forcefully advances, and the forceful try to seize it back by force.”
The whole spirit realm is focused on God’s living word. Jesus said that “the sower (God) sows the word,” and then “Satan comes immediately” to steal it (Mark 4:14–15 NKJV). That word is our sword; it also brings healing, light, life, revelation, and it can renew our minds. If believed and received into the soil of our hearts, it grows to a multiplied harvest for God’s kingdom. Obviously, this is where Satan must focus his forceful defensive efforts; he is terrified of that word coming to harvest because when it does, it completely overruns his feeble kingdom.
