<p>8:24 <i>And they came to him and woke him, saying- </i>Literally, to raise up. It seemed He didn't want to do anything- until they imposed upon Him with all their energy and intensity of focus upon Him and Him alone as their Saviour. And the whole situation was raised up to that end.</p><p><i>Master, master, we perish And he awoke, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water; and they ceased, and there was a calm</i>- The same Greek words for 'save' and 'perish' also occur together in Mt. 16:25, where the Lord teaches that if we seek to save our lives in this world then we will perish. He could thereby be making a criticism of the disciples' plea to be saved from perishing; His sense would then have been 'You should have an even greater, focused intensity upon your need to be saved spiritually and not to perish eternally'. Again the two words occur together in Mt. 18:11, where the Lord says that He came to save those who are perishing- and again, He has in view spiritual, ultimate salvation. The perishing disciples on the lake, in need of saving, are therefore being set up as a picture of the intensity of desire we should have for forgiveness and salvation. The way essential intention is understood as prayer is perhaps reflected in the way Matthew records that the disciples prayed during the storm on the lake: &quot;Lord, save us, we are perishing&quot; (Mt. 8:25). Mark records that their actual words were &quot;Teacher, do you not care if we perish?&quot; (Mk. 4:38). Perhaps this was read by Matthew's inspiration as prayer. An alternative would be that they firstly said the words recorded by Mark, and then those by Matthew- in which case we could perhaps notice the difference between &quot;Teacher&quot; and &quot;Lord&quot;, as if the higher they perceived the greatness of the Lord Jesus, the more moved they were to prayer.</p><p>Mark records that they actually said:&nbsp;&ldquo;Don't you care that we perish?&rdquo; (Mk. 4:38). His whole life and death were because He&nbsp;<i>did</i>&nbsp;so care that they would not perish (Jn. 3:16). It&rsquo;s so reminiscent of a child&rsquo;s total, if temporary, misunderstanding and lack of appreciation of the parent&rsquo;s love and self-sacrifice.</p><p>The Greek for &quot;rebuked&quot; can mean just this, but it is also translated 'to solemnly charge'. There are times in the Gospels where the sovereign authority of Jesus as Lord simply shines through. He did His work with a minimum of such displays of authority. Yet there are enough of them to make us appreciate how He could so easily have 'come down from the cross'; such incidents of sovereign authority in His ministry simply pave the way for us to appreciate the degree of self-control and wilful sacrifice and suffering which He achieved on the cross. The peoples of the first century, and their predecessors, believed that demons and the Satan monster were somehow associated with water &ndash; that was why, they figured, the water mysteriously kept moving, and at times blew up into storms. When we read of God &lsquo;rebuking&rsquo; the waters and making them calm or do what He wished (Ps. 18:16; 104:7; 106:9), we&rsquo;re effectively being told that Yahweh of Israel is so infinitely superior to those supposed demons and sea monsters that for God&rsquo;s people, they have no effective existence. The Lord Jesus taught the same lesson when He &lsquo;rebuked&rsquo; the sea and wind during the storm on the lake (Mt. 8:26). The same Greek word is used to described how He &lsquo;rebuked&rsquo; demons (Mt. 17:18 etc.). I have no doubt that the Lord Jesus didn&rsquo;t believe there was a Loch Ness&ndash;type monster lurking in Galilee which He had to rebuke in order to save the disciples from the storm; and likewise He spoke of &lsquo;rebuking&rsquo; demons as a similar way of teaching others that&nbsp;<i>whatever</i>&nbsp;ideas they had about demons, He was greater and was in a position to &lsquo;rebuke&rsquo; them. Likewise He assured His men that they had the power to tread on snakes, scorpions, and all their enemies (Lk. 10:17&ndash;20). The image of a victorious god trampling his foes and snakes underfoot was well established in the surrounding cultures, and had entered Judaism. The Lord is teaching those fearful men that OK, if that&rsquo;s your perception of things, well, in your terms, you have ultimate victory through working &lsquo;in My name&rsquo;.</p><p>Mark records that the Lord commanded the waves &ldquo;Peace, be still&rdquo;. His authoritative &quot;Peace, be still&quot; (Mk. 4:39) was probably primarily addressed to the Angels controlling the natural elements. The reference to Angels 'ministering' to Him after the temptations suggests their inferiority. Thus He could summon twelve legions of Angels at the time of His greatest passion- maybe He remembered this incident and it was a temptation to Him to use this power over Angels at the crucifixion.</p><p>All three of the Synoptics use the same phrase for &quot;a great calm&quot; (Mk. 4:39; Lk. 8:24). It would've been a profound experience. The whole experience looks ahead to the calm of God's Kingdom being brought about by intense latter day prayer during a tribulation so intense that unless it were shortened, the faithful would die. When the Lord calmed the raging sea into a still calmness, He was consciously replicating what happened when Jonah was cast into the sea. He said plainly that He understood Jonah&rsquo;s willing submission to this as a type of His coming death. Therefore He saw the stilled sea as a symbol of the peace His sacrifice would achieve. And yet even during His ministry, He brought that calmness about; for in principle, His sacrifice was ongoing throughout His life. His blood is a symbol both of His cross and of the life He lived.</p>