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NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 42

In this first scene we have our Lord in the ship with His disciples, which sets forth His being with us in our circumstances; though there was a great tempest He was so restful in His confidence in God that He was asleep. But “his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us: we perish.. .. Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm”. If they had had faith they would not have been afraid while He was with them. He is not here now, but we see the way He behaved in the tempest, and we cannot be like Him, but as His power works in us. “Without me ye can do nothing”. (John 15: 5) It is only as He lives in me that I can do as He has done. But in the second passage (Matthew 14) we see that He has taken a new place supremely above all the winds and waves here, and now what we have to do is to leave the ship and join Him where He is. When Peter cried, “Lord, save me!” the Lord did not quell the storm, but immediately stretched forth His hand and caught him, and drew him to His side, where there was unbroken calm. So He draws us ^[p. 90] to His own side, where we are not only consoled for every pressure and infirmity here, but we are conducted individually into the holiest, where, as the consecrated company (Leviticus 8: 33), we appropriate the blessedness of His nearness to God. When we have part with Him we know that “because I live, ye shall live also”; and then the tempest here, which would overpower us, makes Him indispensable to us; and as we are drawn to Him, we are not only consoled, but looking up to Him, the Author and Finisher of faith, we surmount every difficulty which was between us and Him.

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