<p>8:26&nbsp;<i>And he said to them: Why are you fearful?</i>- Fear and unbelief are again connected in Rev. 21:8. The unbelief refers ultimately to disbelief in our salvation, fear of condemnation; see on 8:25 'We perish'.</p>
<p><i>O you of little faith!</i>- See on 8:25 &quot;save us&quot;. The question as to&nbsp;<i>why</i>&nbsp;they had little faith echoes to us. Why is it that faith is so hard for us? The track record of the Father and Son as rewarding faith is clear and without question. This&nbsp;<i>why</i>&nbsp;question drives each individual into personal introspection, reviewing our history, past and present influences upon us, the nature of our personality.&nbsp;<i>Why</i>&nbsp;do we not believe very strongly... ? The records of the Lord&rsquo;s words to the disciples in the sinking ship are significantly different within the Gospel records. Luke&rsquo;s record has Him upbraiding them: &ldquo;Where is your faith?&rdquo;, as if He thought they had none. Matthew and Mark have Him commenting: &ldquo;O you of&nbsp;<i>little</i>&nbsp;faith...&rdquo;. Putting them together, perhaps He said and implied something like: &lsquo;O you of little faith, you who think you have a little faith, in my view you have no&nbsp;<i>real</i>&nbsp;faith. Come on, where is your&nbsp;<i>real</i>&nbsp;faith, not the little bit which&nbsp;<i>you&nbsp;</i>think you have...?&rsquo; (Mt. 8:26 cp. Mk. 4:40). The Greek for &ldquo;little&rdquo; faith is also translated &lsquo;almost&rsquo;; as if the Lord is saying that they almost had faith, but in reality, had nothing. The Lord spoke of how just a little piece of real faith, like a grain of mustard seed, could result in so much (Mk. 11:12,13)- as if He recognized that there was pseudo-faith, and the real thing.&nbsp;<i>Oligopistos&nbsp;</i>(&quot;little faith&quot;) is used five times by Matthew (Mt. 6:30; 14:31; 16:8; 17:20); it never occurs in Mark and only once in Luke. Perhaps Matthew's Gospel record was written to challenge those whose faith was small, and he encourages them that the disciples likewise started with &quot;little faith&quot;.&nbsp;</p>
<p>It seems to me that all the Lord's servants are taught by increments, progressively, being given tests as to the degree to which they have grasped what the Lord has sought to teach them previously. And the Lord Jesus used a similar structured approach with the training of the twelve disciples. When the Lord commented &ldquo;Have you not yet faith?&rdquo; (Mk. 4:40 RV) it becomes immediately apparent that He was working with the twelve according to some program of spiritual development, and He was frustrated with their lack of response to it and slow progress. He surely has a similar program in place, and makes similar patient efforts, with each one of us. It is apparent to any reader of the Greek text of the Gospels that Jesus almost always left the verb &ldquo;believe&rdquo; without an object (e.g. Mk. 4:40; 5:34,36; 9:23). The question naturally arose: &lsquo;Believe&nbsp;<i>in what or whom</i>?&rsquo;. And seeing the speaker of the words, the answer was there before their eyes.</p>
<p><i>Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm</i>- 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>