Dynamics For Disaster

Matthew 8

Character/mobs & separation for Bible doctrine.

The difference between cowardice and courage is often the difference between being able to concentrate and to use words, thoughts, principles, doctrines in the soul, and emotional revolt of the soul. When emotion takes control there is no way that you can properly handle any situation.

Proverbs 23:7 says: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.” You are what you think as an individual with capacity for thought. The possession of a soul is your first key. The real part of you is your soul with its self-consciousness, with its left and right lobes, frame of reference, memory centre, vocabulary and categorical storage, norms and standards, with your volition with positive and negative poles, with emotion designed to respond to what you have in your right lobe — designed to respond but never to rule your soul.

Today emotion rules the souls of people in this country and this is conditioning for conquest by an outside power. The right lobe of the soul, called kardia, is the male part of the soul; emotion is the female. The female must never take charge.

Liberalism produces arrogance; arrogance assumes the prerogatives of God and destroys freedom with a ploy called equality. Equality is a destruction of our freedom. Our nation has been infected by the insanity of Marxist socialism, the welfare state, the destruction of self-determination. The crisis is here. How are we going to handle it?

Matthew 8:18 — “Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart to the other side.”

We start out with a principle: the imperative of distraction, Verse 18. We are going to have some casualties. We have a mob. We have thousands of people following our Lord Jesus Christ who has come to the edge of a lake called a sea. This lake, rather shallow, is about 13 or 14 miles long and 7 or 8 miles wide and is surrounded by high mountainous terrain and it has heavy storms.

There is a “mob” which is exactly what you have to call a crowd which is out of control. Our Lord has no control over thousands of people. They are there because of Him, they have seen Him perform miracles, they have heard His dynamic messages, they look to Him as the Person to help them in their personal problems and their national problems. They are all confused and they are all mixed up and when people are mixed up and confused and they see a miracle, then they follow it. They hear someone speak with confidence and they follow him. Now we have a mob and you can’t do anything with a mob. So it is necessary to separate the men from the boys and to separate the people who can think from those in the mob who will never be able to think.

Verse 18 — we begin with the transitional use of the conjunctive particle de, “now” is the correct translation. This particle relates past historical situations with the present and links it even to the future so that there is an application to us. It links all that has happened in the past but it also sees the situation from the standpoint of people knowing there is trouble. They realise that the nation is on the verge of destruction. In fact forty years after this incident the nation would be destroyed under the fifth cycle of discipline. And it would go out of history completely under the principle that Jesus Christ controls history and that at certain times in history certain cancers must be removed from the population of the earth.

Next we have a subject, the nominative subject o( ‘Iesouj, the human title for our Lord Jesus Christ, the very key to the plan of God. Remember, the plan of God is X+Y+Z which is all dependant upon imputations.

“Now the Jesus,” Jesus Christ who is eternal God, Jesus Christ who is the wisdom of God, Jesus Christ who provides for us eternal salvation, the unique Person of the universe, true humanity and undiminished deity in one Person forever.

Next we notice that He looks at the crowd. We have the aorist active participle of the verb o(raw. This is not the same as blepw which means to glance. Blepw means that you don’t have to use your mentality, just your eyes. Like so many people who just look around but never associate with what they see. They do not see danger when it is coming, they do not see something wonderful or pleasant. It really means to be non-alert. But here we have o(raw which means to look with thought and to associate what you see with what you have in your mind. Jesus Christ looks at this crowd and He analyses them; He knows them for what they are. The aorist tense is a constative aorist indicating the fact that He is not only looking at the crowd but we might say He is studying the crowd. The constative aorist gathers up into one entirety the Lord Jesus Christ making a reconnaissance of the crowd, an estimate of the situation.

“multitudes” — o)xloj, which is not like a platoon or a company. A platoon or a company is organised where everyone has a slot, a place, a job. This is a crowd or a mob where no authority has been established. These people were following Jesus Christ for different reasons, different motivations. Some are following Him because they want to be liberated from the Romans. Some are following because they have sick relatives they want healed. Some are following Him because they just want a good side show and they are impressed by the way He cast out demons in the same chapter. Some like good messages and He has a lot of good messages. Everyone has a different reason. This was a mob and there has to be a separation, a culling out of those who can be prepared for a crisis and those who will never make it.

The historical circumstances: it was a time just before historical disaster to the kingdom of Judah. Already Judaea is a Roman province, the Jews are discontented, they are looking for leadership, they are looking for help. They have personal problems, they have national problems, and for this reason the crowd had come to Jesus Christ, not so much for salvation and for doctrine, but for personal help.

What is a crowd?

1. A crowd is made up of people who are emotional, fickle, and irrational. Emotion means no thought content, no common sense, no doctrine. There is no thinking ability, there is no vocabulary in the emotion of the soul. This is why a mob has to be impressed, it has to be controlled.

2. Furthermore, approbation from the masses becomes a distraction to perception of doctrine and therefore becomes the breeding ground for arrogance. Many of those disciples in the mob are teachable. They are going to be the men for the crisis, they are going to learn how to handle a crisis from doctrine. But they have to be separated so they can concentrate on what is taught. That is exactly what a church is: it is to take you out of the run of society and separate you for a short period of time to learn Bible doctrine.

3. Those who depend upon a crowd for approbation have no capacity for life.

4. Approbation from the crowd, when taken seriously, destroys moral courage, distracts from doctrine, and guarantees a life of misery.

5. Since a crowd is irrational, emotional and incapable of thought it falls apart in historical disaster. As soon as there is any type of a pressure situation a mob always panics. A mob is incapable of thought, incapable of moral courage, incapable of discernment.

6. A mob destroys human freedom by demanding equality, intruding into privacy. They destroy property.

7. Therefore, a crowd or a mob becomes an evil instrument easily succumbing to rumour, propaganda, victimised by any demagogue who promises them the Millennium. (The communists have discovered that a mob is a weapon). There is always someone who can find the trigger to a mob and start them on a rampage.

8. Freedom is lost in a crowd or a mob and every person who is a part of a crowd or a mob is a slave. There is no freedom in a mob.

9. Therefore, a mob is a distraction to the perception of doctrine. There are many people in the mob or crowd who have already believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and received Him as their personal saviour but they are now being distracted because they are not in an organised situation, they are in a mob. Therefore they must be separated from the mob before they can matriculate in the course called Dynamics For Disaster. The Lord Jesus Christ must separate positive volition toward doctrine from the crowd or the mob. And separation from the mob is necessary for establishing our Lord’s authority for the purpose of academic discipline and the inculcation of the “dynamics for disaster.” All believers who advance to maturity must be separated from the mob and its evil influences. Remember, the most precious thing that you have is your thought, the ability to think, your freedom to think. Every believer must make decisions regarding doctrine.

After salvation the great decision is, What do you think of doctrine? Positive volition = advance to maturity; negative volition = first of all you are in the warning discipline, then intensive discipline, and eventually dying discipline — after you have been formed up for a cadre of aggressors to distract other believers: a negative wife, a positive husband; a negative husband, a positive wife; positive children, negative parents, etc. Always the believers who are negative to doctrine are a part of the FTX [field training exercise] system, the aggressors. They are believers; they are going to distract you from doctrine.

Corrected translation: “Now when Jesus saw the mob.” And this scene, remember, is an estimate of the situation; it is a personnel reconnaissance situation. He is in their presence because we have next a prepositional phrase: peri [around] plus the accusative singular of autos, an intensive pronoun in the Greek used as a personal pronoun, third person singular, translated very simply, “around him.” Jesus must separate believers in that mob from the distraction. To do so He has to give a command, and by giving a command He will establish His authority. Some are going to obey that command and are going to embark in a ship. Others are going to come up with excuses. We will study, for example, the first dropout category, the pseudo intellectual. The pseudo intellectual is always a believer with scar tissue on the soul and the greater the scar tissue the more arrogance builds up. And the more arrogance builds up the more he is impressed with his own thoughts; he is unteachable. He has a “better way,” he has an angle, he has something he is going to do. Therefore, arrogant people with scar tissue on the soul are unteachable; they are pseudo intellectuals. They usually have a high IQ but they do not know how to put their thoughts together; they cannot think in terms of principle; they are susceptible to false concepts. Arrogance in the soul resists truth. Therefore you can perceive an outer layer of academic substance but no inner truth. We are going to see that a pseudo intellectual can never stand up to a historical crisis. He has no concentration.

What are you learning just now? The concentration that it takes for perception and convert it from gnwsij doctrine to e)pignwsij is the same system for application. If you cannot concentrate in learning you can never apply what you have learned. This is because the system of learning is concentration. Concentration is the way you learn; concentration is the system of application. Perception and application work on the same system, only you reverse the system. In perception the system takes it in; in application the system puts it out. And if you cannot concentrate in church you cannot concentrate in a crisis. And the difference between courage and cowardice is the ability to concentrate, application of what you know.

So our Lord gives a command. Those who obey His authority will also obey His delegated authority which is Bible doctrine. You cannot learn doctrine as a part of a mob. The first key to anything is authority. Authority is the key to freedom; authority is the key to perception; authority is the key to handling crises; authority is the key to being a good lover; authority is the key to everything. And you take authority plus concentration and you have capacity for life where doctrine is involved.

Now that is exactly what we are as a local church. You live out there in the city with the mob, and you have already learned that they can’t think. You know what they are going to do in a crisis, everyone running in a panic, screaming, yelling, hysteria, etc. But you have learned to step away and take in doctrine by concentrating in the separated environment of a local church.

So far we have seen the crowd gathering for matriculation in the course in Dynamics For Disaster. We have taken up the various principles related to a mob and seen the distinctions between a mob and those who are under authority in a group.

Application of this principle

1. The local church takes the believer out of the mob and places him under the environment of authority in establishment to guarantee his privacy as well as his opportunity to learn Bible doctrine and to advance to maturity. This is the purpose of the local church [the classroom that separates you from the mob]. There is no place in the local church for any mob action.

2. The only way to advance to maturity is by inculcation of Bible doctrine. Therefore, there can be no perception of Bible doctrine until one has separated himself from the lawlessness, emotionalism, instability and irrationality of the crowd [mob]. Everything in the mob is a distraction to the very purpose for which we remain in this life, perception of Bible doctrine: the lawlessness of the mob, its influence, everything about it. And no one ever learns doctrine on his own. He learns it in a congregation, a group of people under authority. In this way your privacy, your volition, your self-determination are protected so that you will determine whether you advance or not.

3. It is vitally necessary that you learn to rightly divide the Word of truth, that you learn to distinguish between a mob and a congregation; in fact, a mob and a group of people under some form of discipline or establishment.

4. While the mob is anti-Christ the group of believers in the local church called a congregation are pro-Christ and they are under the delegated authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. The authority is delegated to the pastor-teacher; the authority is delegated to the doctrine; the authority is delegated to whatever administrative functions are necessary within any particular local church. This explains the verse which says: “Let everything be done decently and in order” .

5. The gift of evangelism is different from witnessing to other people. Every believer is commanded to witness and in that way we call that personal evangelism. But the gift of evangelism is a spiritual gift designed to function outside of the church, and the gift is designed to give the believer who is the evangelist a hearing in front of a mob. The gift of evangelism, then, is designed to get a hearing in a crowd or a mob so that the individuals in that mob will concentrate on the presentation of the Gospel and through the ministry of the Spirit understand the issue.

6. For spiritual growth and glorification of Christ, however, it is necessary to separate believers from that crowd so that they can concentrate on the teaching of doctrine without distraction.

7. The mob is anti-authority and unstable, while the assembly of believers in the local church is amenable to the authority of the communicator and therefore objective. Mobs are subjective. They are irrational and easily set off on a wrong direction. Often a mob turns into rabble at the drop of a word.

8. It becomes necessary, therefore, for our Lord Jesus Christ to make a careful estimate of the situation and to separate the believers who are positive toward doctrine from the negative believers and the unbelievers. This separation is necessary for inculcation.

That is why our Lord gives an order, He “gave commandment to depart unto the other side,” the aorist active indicative of the verb keleuw, which means to give orders or give a command, and it is followed by an infinitive which indicates the action involved and to whom it is pertinent. And we are going to translate it: “Now when Jesus saw the mob around him he gave orders” .The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. The active voice, Jesus Christ produced the action. He simply said: “Move to the other side.” There was a large ship there and by getting those who were positive on a ship they are isolated and under His authority and away from the mob. You must break away from the mob. He can’t have Bible class in the mob.

Then we have an aorist active infinitive, a)perxomai, which means to depart or to go. The aorist tense this time is a culminative aorist, it views the action of the departure in its entirety but regards it from the viewpoint of existing results. Separation from the mob is the result, to where they can matriculate in the course in disaster. There is actually a middle voice but it is active in meaning because it is deponent. And hence this deponent verb. The positive believers produce the action of the verb by separating from the mob. There will be some who will make some attempt to save face. We’ll call those “dropouts.”

With this we have a prepositional phrase, e)ij plus an adverb of place, peran. Literally it means “shore” or “land on the other side” but it is an idiom for across the sea or across the lake. The lake refers to the Sea of Galilee.

By His command our Lord is going to separate those who are positive toward doctrine from those who are negative toward doctrine. The command to cross the Sea of Galilee causes a crisis to develop immediately, a crisis demanding decision. This forces people from their own free will, and in the privacy of their souls, to make a decision. Many believers are going to be casualties long before any disaster can occur. These are the believers who are semi-positive, they give lip service to our Lord but they are not consistent enough to separate from a mob in order that they might join a student body. Therefore our Lord’s command is a test to eliminate those who cannot endure the crisis or learn from the course. Our Lord’s command results again in a real test for a lot of people. We are later going to note three categories of believers who are too weak to ever advance in the Christian life and fulfil the plan of God or ever endure a real historical crisis. They will never have capacity for life or happiness or blessing. They will have no capacity for dying and these three categories represent far too many believers today.

Verses 19-20 — the case of the first distracted disciple. [He represents an entire category.]

In verse 19 you notice something immediately: dedication! sincerity! We begin with the connective use of the conjunction kai. And this conjunction is very important because it means more than “and.” It separates those who are going to drop out, those who have excuses, those who are categorical failures, from those who recognise the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and make their decisions accordingly.

Next we have a nominative singular from an adjective numeral e(ij, meaning “one.” But it is used here as an indefinite article, which merely describes an entire category of people. So while only one person represents the category we are talking about one reason many Christians can never live through a crisis. They never survive, never can handle historical disaster.

With this we have the nominative singular subject from the noun grammateuj, used in the Roman world for a secretary, a clerk, or an administrator in business, but used in the Jewish world and used here for a scholar, a student, “a certain scholar.”

We are going to discover that this person was a pseudo intellectual. A pseudo intellectual is a person whose arrogance of the soul is greater than his knowledge. Therefore his arrogance forms a wall around the possibility of ever getting to real truth. He is smart but he has no foundation of doctrine or truth. All of his knowledge, no matter how great the expertise, has no roots in doctrine.

Now this man has a very high IQ. He is brilliant. He is attracted to Christ because of His intellect; he is impressed with our Lord’s great intellect. He is impressed with His ability to debate the Pharisees.

Note: Pseudo intellectuals are always, invariably, liberals. And beneath the veneer of intellectualism is emotional distraction. This is why the liberals are always trying to do good somewhere, why they are bleeding-heart do-gooders, and why they create a vacuum into which socialism and Marxism is sucked.

“Now a certain scribe.” We understand the principles involved with this man. He is a dropout; he represents a category of believers who never make it in the Christian life, even though they wind up

in heaven. They fail because they are pseudo intellectuals. A pseudo intellectual cannot survive in an historical crisis. This man is following the Lord and is a part of this mob because he hopes to gain from the association. He hopes to establish himself in some special way. Above all he is impressed with himself, arrogance, and he is impressed with our Lord’s ability to gather a crowd. The approbation of the crowd always impresses the arrogant person.

“came and said to him,” the aorist active participle of the verb proserxomai. Proj means face to face, e)rxomai means to come, and it is perhaps best translated: “having approached.” This is the approach of a person who is so arrogant that he thinks his personal problem is more important than anything else in life.

“and said” — the aorist active indicative of legw, used to communicate whatever thought happens to be in the mentality of the soul. He is now going to express what is on his mind.

“Master” — the vocative singular from the noun didaskoloj, teacher. He has used a word for authority, for a teacher. So he recognises our Lord’s authority in a limited way, academically only. The Scribe is an academic persona and he is speaking as an equal. The other categories of believers who come up are going to use the word kurioj, for absolute authority and even meaning deity. So he is respectful but he doesn’t really accept the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. He follows what he considers the correct protocol to speak with an equal.

Principle

1. It was convenient for the moment for the pseudo intellectual to recognise limited authority in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a matter of convenience. Arrogance always thinks of authority in terms of convenience. Arrogance is disassociated from reality to the extent that all authority is true establishment authority but a matter of personal convenience.

2. So obviously this was pseudo recognition of our Lord’s authority. Pseudo intellectuals are only capable of pseudo recognition. The arrogance of this hypocrite would only allow him to recognise one authority, and that is himself. In his thinking he subordinates all genuine authority to his own arrogance.

3. This person in arrogance assumes that his high IQ, his quickness with words, made him superior to the human race. And, therefore, when arrogance makes this assumption, as inevitably resident arrogance will, the individual as the arrogance increases divorces himself from reality.

4. As is too often the case with smart people, the assumption of superiority over others divorces them from the reality of life and the resultant arrogance gives them inflexibility regarding the nonessentials.

5. This smart believer is extremely self-centred. He assumes that our Lord cannot wait to hear his verbal declaration of loyalty and his dedication to Christ.

6. Arrogance has blinded this smart believer to his real value — nothing.

7. Being smart and having quick perceptive abilities this scribe attaches erroneous importance to his pseudo intellectuality. All Christians who are smart and become pseudo intellectuals inevitably follow rationalism or empiricism as their system of perception. Both systems are hopeless as far as ever learning doctrine is concerned and, therefore, in following such systems and relating them to life, one can never understand doctrine.

8. Again then, his arrogance and self-centredness has divorced him from reality.

9. Being smart and possessing quick perceptive ability has its occupational hazards: lack of common sense, disorientation to life, arrogance, self-centredness, a feeling of self-importance, and self-righteousness.

10. When a smart person falls into these occupational hazards he becomes emotionally unstable. It eventuates in neurosis or psychosis. This pseudo intellectual believer is not yet at this stage; he is emotionally unstable, he is arrogant, selfish, etc. and, therefore, he is a slave to how he feels.

“I will follow you anywhere,” the future active indicative of a)kolouqew. It is a statement from emotional instability; it is not loyalty at all. The predictive future is for an event expected to occur in the immediate future. Jesus has given a command. Being full of emotion the scribe makes a verbal dedication. Emotion expresses itself through sincerity. Sincerity is not a Christian virtue. It is directly hitched up to your emotion and therefore is no good in a crisis. Sincerity is as meaningless as the emotion which originates it. “you,” su.

Principle

1. First, note that this is a dogmatic statement. Not only is this a dogmatic statement but it is an emotional statement. It is a sincere statement and an arrogant statement.

2. The dative case implies that the scribe is doing Jesus a favour by following Him: “I will follow you.”

3. The scribe’s emotional decision has no meaning. Neither does any other emotional decision; an emotional decision has no spiritual connotation. God the Holy Spirit is not in emotion. If emotion takes over the soul you have no capacity for life, you have no capacity for love, you have no capacity for happiness, and as far as our context is concerned you will never survive historical catastrophe. Emotion will not carry you in anything in life.

4. Verbal dedication means absolutely nothing in the Christian life, for verbal dedication [or overt dedication] merely expresses emotional reversionism or instability.

5. This verbal dedication is comparable to our 20th century dedications such as full-time Christian service, rededication, reaffirmation of faith, surrender to preach, etc.

6. Verbal dedication of all categories are no substitute for positive volition towards Bible teaching, that is the basic decision after salvation.

7. This dedication is based on the fact that Jesus had given the command to depart, and being smart the scribe concluded that Christ was bluffing. Being smart he reasoned: “He’s not really going to leave a good thing like this, the thousands of people around on the hillside. They are impressed, they compliment Him, and He is going to leave a good thing like this? He’s bluffing.” He is impugning our Lord’s motivation, he is ascribing to our Lord his own motives.

“whithersoever thou goest” in the King James, but what he really said was an idiom which is a nuance: o(pou e)an a)perxh. O(pou is an adverbial particle. It denotes a place, it is an adverb of place, but when you combine it with the next particle e)an, then o(pou plus e)an in the Greek means “wherever” in modern English, like “wherever you go.” But the problem is that e)an introduces doubt. E)an is a particle that introduces a third class condition: “If,” maybe you will and maybe you will not. So the idiom “wherever” means “wherever” with a doubt. It should be translated “wherever if you go.”

With this, a)perxh is the present active subjunctive of a)perxomai, middle in form, active in meaning. It is a deponent verb]. The present tense is tendencial, used for an action which is purposed but not actually taking place, and with e)an, not likely to take place, says this very smart person. The scribe is assuming that our Lord is not going and, therefore, assuming that he has made a safe but impressive dedication, going to cost him nothing. To the scribe the departure of our Lord is a possibility but not a reality.

Now here is the point: People who are divorced from reality can never accept reality. And when reality is disaster they cannot cope. This man will be a dropout.

So the third class condition implies that the scribe has doubts about Jesus leaving the large crowd. And in this the scribe merely takes his own motivations and in arrogance and superimposes them on the Lord Jesus Christ. Instead of getting his motivations from the doctrine taught by our Lord he is superimposing his own motivations on the Lord Himself, and to do that he has to have an umbrella of arrogance.

Pseudo Intellectual vs Reality

Gun control: We have to go back to the principle of freedom as defined in the Word of God. Freedom includes the principle of privacy. You do not have freedom unless you have privacy. There is also the principle of property and the umbrella of authority and all of these are a part of freedom.

Now, if I decide that I want to own a gun I have the right to go and purchase a gun without anyone registering it. It is a matter of privacy; I am a law-abiding citizen. And so the fact that they tell me that I must sign papers and show my driver’s licence is a violation of my freedom by the Government, which becomes at this point evil government. The gun that I now possess is my property, I have a right to keep it, I have a right to do anything I like with it provided, of course, I do not violate common law.

My possession of a weapon gives me authority to protect my own property and to protect my own privacy. So owning a gun is something that everyone should have as a matter of principle. The next principle is that not only should everyone in America own guns but they should know how to use them. This is a deterrent to crime. The principle is that a disarmed citizenry is a helpless citizenry. So a gun is one of the systems for freedom.

Killing, of course, a matter of volition of the soul, like any sin. Weapons are not the system of volition, it is what you have in the soul. People kill other people because they have free will and they decide to do it. The old sin nature cannot be legislated against and you cannot stop crime and violence by passing laws against the means employed, whether they are guns, knives, ice picks or whatever. There are always those under the influence of evil who feel that the private citizen has no business with weapons.

Luke 11:21 — “When a strong man,” o(tan, “when,” used for a condition which is conditional, possible, and which is repeated many times in history and which has occurred before. So it is a general situation that occurs in every generation. And then we have the nominative singular i)sxuroj, which does not mean a strong man with muscle. It means a strong man with his mind, a person who can concentrate and think under disaster conditions, a person who has common sense and alertness. With this we have the nominative masculine singular of the definite article used as a demonstrative pronoun to place great emphasis on the fact that certain people have the ability and certain people acquire the ability to think. So that from moral courage comes the ability to handle any disaster situation. The corrected translation: “Whenever that strong person … “ The next word is a perfect passive participle from the verb kaqoplizw, to be armed, to possess weapons. A well-armed person can use his equipment in a disaster. The passive voice, the strong person with common sense, with doctrine resident in the soul, receives the action of the verb — being prepared for violence, for crime, for attack. The participle is a temporal participle meaning after he has been completely armed. But this word “completely armed” means he not only has a weapon but he knows how to use it. Having a weapon and not knowing how to use it is not having a weapon at all. That is the principle here.

Then it goes on to say “keepeth,” the present active subjunctive of the word fulassw, to guard and to defend “his own home.”

The passage says: “Whenever that strong person has been completely armed he guards his own home. Therefore his possessions and his loved ones remain undisturbed” .The Word of God itself demands that you have two things that must be co-ordinated for a crisis. First of all you must have doctrine resident in the soul and, secondly, weaponry of some sort to face the crisis. And you combine these and you have effectiveness.

Matthew 8:18 — When Jesus saw the mob around Him He knew that He had to separate. There is always the principle of separating for learning.

Verse 19, the pseudo intellectual.

Principle

1. By use of the third class condition “if you go” the scribe not only doubts the departure of Jesus but he impugns His motivation.

2. Being arrogant and self-righteous the scribe, who is a scholar, thinks of success in terms of a large crowd. To him it is always numbers, numbers, numbers. He desires the approbation of the crowd.

3. If the situation were reversed and the scribe had the large crowd following him he would remain in his place of approbation and comfort.

4. Therefore, he would never cross the lake to a set of uncertain and unknown circumstances. The scribe, then, is the type of believer who looks at life from the human viewpoint because he has no interest in doctrine and his driving motivation is to push himself. He wants approbation and recognition.

5. The scribe will follow Jesus as far as the ship. But when he discovers that Jesus has no hotel reservations, no estate on the other side, no invitation from some affluent person, he is going to decline. In other words, he is a believer in Jesus Christ who will be in heaven, but in the meantime he is a failure for any catastrophe, personal or historical crisis. He follows the Lord as long as it does not interfere with his personal comfort.

Without doctrine the scribe has neither integrity nor moral courage to venture out into the unknown circumstances of a ship on dangerous seas and in uncertain conditions.

Pseudo intellectuals are always sincere, always emotional, and they are always impulsive. “I will follow thee withersoever thou goest” was an impulsive statement. Emotion produces impulsive action and we must get away from impulsive action into rational action, meaningful action, action based upon the application of doctrine to experience. So emotion and arrogance in the soul produce sincere dedication and emotion produces impulsiveness. [There is nothing wrong with emotion but we must use our emotion properly. It must be subordinated to our right lobe]

Conclusion

1. This disciple was precipitant instead of perceptive.

2. He was emotional, sincere, overtly dedicated, enthusiastic, impulsive, and a total failure.

3. This category of believer cannot even face historical disaster. As our Lord’s answer in the next verse reveals, the pseudo intellectual is totally divorced from reality and he cannot even face the most superficial type of testing which is uncertainty. If you cannot face uncertainty you cannot face disaster.

4. So this believer has substituted emotion, enthusiasm, sincerity, dedication, and impulsiveness for true motivation from doctrine resident in the soul.

There is no substitute, then, for doctrine resident in the soul. Every day is a day of preparation for disaster and suffering. Every day is a God-given opportunity to learn more doctrine which alone carries us in disaster. This believer is too shallow, too smart, too arrogant to get into the boat. His superficialities will insulate him against the rigours of the journey. So the scribe perfectly represents smart, shallow, sincere, superficial believers. They always fade in normal circumstances. Therefore they never face the abnormal circumstances of life.

Now the answer in verse 20 is a very simple answer and yet it is a very complex answer.

Job 5:19-27

If you are a member of the human race God has a plan for your life. It is imperative that you understand that you do not have to accept God’s plan. We are dealing with a pseudo intellectual. He has made a decision and he has believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. He will be in heaven no matter how he fails, how he succeeds or anything else. The justice of God imputes to man certain things which set him up for the plan of God but leave it open to his volition. Human life is imputed at birth to the soul; Adam’s original sin is imputed at birth to its target, the old sin nature. Man is born physically alive and spiritually dead. This sets up condemnation which immediately sets up a potential — salvation. God does not condemn without giving you an opportunity to use your volition apart from human merit in order to break out of the problem. We call that simply X radical, human life imputed at birth plus Adam’s original sin equals the first potential. This potential is based upon the second imputation, the fact that we are condemned by the imputation of Adam’s sin is indicative of the fact that we have the potentiality of salvation, potential plus information which we call doctrine. The doctrine in this case is the Gospel. This equals the first hope, absolute confidence that when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ we have eternal life. The hope is replaced by reality when we believe in Christ. We call that salvation adjustment to the justice of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Now there is some momentum in the plan of God. We have advanced to the point of believing in Christ. The moment we believe in Christ there are two imputations which are included in the plan of God. One of these is our second imputation in Y radical, judicial imputation number one, all personal sins are imputed to Christ on the cross and judged — the saving work of Christ. Judicial imputation number two, the imputation of divine righteousness to the believer at the moment of salvation. And this second imputation leads to a second potential, the imputation of blessing in time which glorifies God, the tactical victory of the angelic conflict, plus the pertinent doctrine which reads us into the picture, equals the second hope, absolute confidence that when we advance to maturity through the perception of doctrine we will receive from the justice of God divine blessing, plus maturity adjustment to the justice of God through maximum doctrine resident in the soul.

That brings us to Z radical which is the place where we have the mature believer. Z radical, the imputation of eternal life at salvation plus the imputation of blessing in time equals the third potential, the potential for great blessing and reward in eternity. Plus pertinent doctrine equals the third hope, absolute confidence that when we attain maturity and receive the six categories of blessing in time, these are merely a prelude, a guarantee of greater rewards and blessings in eternity. This equals the plan of God.

God has a plan for each one and some people peel off, they never get out of X radical. Some peel off at Y radical and some people never get out of Z radical. The objective is to take in doctrine and reach Z radical. Z radical has the solution to every disaster and catastrophe of life. There is no solution in X radical. In Y radical the challenge is doctrine, in Z radical the challenge is life itself; you have capacity for life, capacity for blessing, capacity for anything that life has to offer and you have achieved the point of tactical victory.

Now before we get rid of the first dropout let’s see what could have happened had he persisted and got into the ship, had he embarked across the sea, had he been a plugger. It isn’t the smart people, it isn’t the talented people who make it in life. It is the people who plug, and when I say plug I mean self-discipline today, tomorrow, the next day no matter what distractions may come your way. To understand the objective and to move toward the objective is what counts.

God has a plan for your life and God’s plan includes the ability to handle any form of disaster. See Job 5:19 — Here is a man who has reached Z radical. What kind of a life does a believer have who attains maturity?

Verse 19 — “In six troubles he will deliver you,” the hiphil imperfect of the verb natsal. This does not mean deliverance such as delivering a nation from attack but it means to rescue under a short term pressure situation. And the rescue is caused by thinking, concentration under pressure. The hiphil stem says that you simply pull out the doctrine that you have and utilise it. “Six troubles,” there are six categories of blessing and there are six categories of trouble.

“Furthermore, in seven,” now we are intensifying the problem, “evil will not touch you,” the qal imperfect of the verb naga. Now we have something which can reach into your soul. It isn’t the person who can destroy your body it is the person who can influence your soul. And so the word “touch” is used because unless you are insulated with Bible doctrine something is going to get to your soul — some form of satanic activity. Kosmos diabolicus offers many enticing ideas that are completely and totally off-base and an attack on freedom.

The believer who goes all the way with doctrine is going to wind up facing not only troubles but disaster. That is number seven, evil.

The word for evil is ra in the Hebrew. Evil includes four great disasters. Economic is the first, military is the second, social is the third and dying is the fourth. This is the proper rational sequence. In order to live there must be some form of economic function whereby one can get a job, whereby one can achieve, whereby one can become wealthy and prosperous without government interference and without intrusion. Next comes the military. Once you have a little prosperity you need to protect it; someone else wants it. So it is the military that protects it. This protection ensures social life. And then comes dying and we are all going to die! If you live by doctrine you will die by doctrine and the dying will be the icing on the cake, it will be greater than anything you ever had in life. Disaster is God’s opportunity to demonstrate His grace.

Verse 20 — “In famine,” economic disaster, “he will preserve you from death,” the qal perfect of padah, the action was completed in eternity past. Padah in the perfect tense means that billions and billions of years ago in eternity past God knew every problem you would ever have and at that time He provided the solution. So that when you get into a disaster the mature believer is preserved; “in war from the power of the sword.” This is a reference to military disaster.

Verse 21 — Social disaster. What is social disaster? The worst of all sins. “You will be hidden from the scourge of the tongue.” That is social disaster. The worst thing that can happen in any group in society is gossip, maligning, judging. Live and let live is the principle of doctrine, it is a part of freedom. Everyone has a right to their privacy. Therefore, gossip is one of the greatest of all evils, it is a sin parlayed into evil. So when social disaster in mentioned the worst thing that can happen is to be a victim of gossip, maligning, judging, etc.; “you will be hidden” is the niphel imperfect from chabah. Passive voice, you receive protection from the scourge and the biting of the tongue.

“Neither will you be afraid.” The qal imperfect of jaree does not mean to have a nervous system tensed up getting ready for something. Fear is something entirely different, it is failure to orient to a situation with principles, failure to think under pressure, failure to fulfil some system of protocol whether physical or mental under pressure. Courage is always the ability to think, the ability to react, the ability to do something rather than freezing; “of destruction” is shodh, violent death, terrible death, painful death, something that hurts, something you have to do all by yourself. [Death is a summary of your life. There is marvellous peace and strength to those who have doctrine resident in the soul]

Verse 22 — Therefore when it comes “you will laugh,” the qal imperfect of saqach. This isn’t hysteria or snickering. This is a relaxed laugh, a sense of humour, application of doctrine; “from wild animals of the earth.” In Job’s time wild animals were a common cause of death. In the 20th century wild animals might be cars, planes, nuclear weapons, mixed up people, bugs, or whatever. In all of these things you have nothing to fear, maximum adjustment to the justice of God removes fear regarding many of the instruments of death.

Verse 23 — “For your covenant will be with the stones of the field.” This is a reference to weapons of destruction. Stones were used as ancient artillery. “the beasts of the field,” the wild animals, the instrument of death; “will be at piece with you.” We have that wall of fire until the Lord decides to take us home. No instrument of death can remove the mature believer from this life. Only the integrity of God can transfer him from earth to heaven. Once the Lord calls a believer home all the power and ability of this world cannot retain him in this life. The believer, however, cannot die until the Lord is ready to take him home.

Verse 24 — “Therefore you will know.” That is what it is all about. This is something that is completed before you hit death. You already have the information, you already have the capacity for dying well; “your tent,” that is, your human body. Not “in peace.” The word “shalom” here means a state of prosperity. This is the believer in Z radical who has all of the prosperities of life — dying grace; “you will visit your home” — heaven. The word for “visit” is paqad and it means a visit that you anticipate with great pleasure.

Verse 25 — If you crack the maturity barrier you leave behind a great heritage for those who love you. All of your loved ones are beneficiaries by your death. “And you will know that your seed will be many and your offspring like the shoots of the field.” This is not quite correct because it means here blessing and prosperity by association. The only prosperity, the only promotion, the only success some people are ever going to have is going to come from the fact that they were associated with a mature believer. The mature believer dies and his wife or her husband, the parents, the children, the loved ones the friends, the family, are blessed by association.

Verse 26 — “You will come in a full age,” the qal imperfect of bo. “like a shock of corn comes in its season,” the farmer is the expert. Corn does not all ripen at the same time and therefore they didn’t pick it all at the same time but waited until it ripened. So there is a right time and a wrong time to pick corn which the expert must determine. God is the expert. He must decide when it is time to depart from this life and by what manner we should die. This means the “full age” isn’t a long life; full age is the believer who reaches maturity. The full age is the believer in Z radical.

Verse 27 — “Behold this doctrine, we have researched it,” the qal perfect from caqar which means not only to have the principle but to have also gathered the experience; “this is the gist of it, Hear it,” a command. Get the information into your soul, concentrate, understand what is being said. Then you decide what you are going to do with it; “know it for yourself,” that is what makes you spiritually self-sustaining. That means that every time you get into a jamb you don’t run to someone. You reach into your soul and pull out the doctrinal resources of your own soul and use them. “KNOW IT FOR YOURSELF.”

Luke 9:60. Funerals, customs/society; Pleasures/human good vs GAP

Matthew 8:22, the first half of our Lord’s answer to the second dropout. The second half of the answer is found in Luke 9:60.

Matt. 8:22, “But Jesus said to him, Follow me; and leave the dead to bury their dead.” Luke 9:60 — “but go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.”

In Matt. 8:22 we have a post positive conjunctive particle de which emphasises the contrast between the request of the disciple and the answer of our Lord Jesus Christ. Next, the nominative singular subject ‘Iesouj, Jesus. “But Jesus.” We are going to have a contrast here because the man has one idea; our Lord’s command demands something else. The Lord’s commands take precedence over any concept, any idea, any correct function in which we are involved. The present active indicative of legw is used for a verb for answering here, a communication verb. And the present tense is called an aoristic present for punctiliar action in present time. The answer was short, to the point, and covered the situation so that this man knew that by leaving for his father’s funeral he was rejecting Bible doctrine, resisting the authority of our Lord, and would not be prepared for the disaster to come. The active voice, Jesus Christ produces the action by answering him. The declarative indicative is for the historical reality of the situation, followed by the dative singular indirect object from a)utoj, an intensive pronoun used as a personal pronoun, third person singular. “Jesus said to him, Follow me.” The present tense is the progressive present for action in a state of persistence. The active voice, the second distracted disciple is commanded to produce the action of the verb. He will not but he is given the opportunity. This is the imperative mood of command. The verb and command is fulfilled literally by entering the ship, embarking across the sea, entering and matriculating in the course, Disaster Dynamics. The principle is: We can only follow the Lord through persistence in the perception of doctrine, never by procrastination. In other words we must keep plugging daily. This is what is meant by “Follow me.”

“and leave the dead to bury their own dead,” first of all we have a connective conjunction kai plus a second active aorist imperative, a)fihmi, which means to dismiss, to let go, to send away, to leave, to permit or to tolerate. It has a variation of nuances. Here is a second command to a distracted disciple, telling him the cure for distraction. There is no possible way to avoid distraction unless your priorities are straight and unless the priority of doctrine precedes the protocol of life. Many of the meanings which fit this particular command, such as tolerate the dead to bury their own dead or permit the dead to bury their own dead, are admissible but it actually means “leave the dead” .In other words, leave in your mind. When doctrine is an issue nothing else is important. The connotation here is separation in the mind rather than permission or toleration. And this distracted disciple is not to even attend the funeral. The point is that if this man goes to his father’s funeral it is legitimate, moral, correct, and even honourable, but this man has a problem. All of his life he has catered to what society thinks. He has been a protocol personality. He lives his life under the dictates of society. If society says, Do this, Do that, then this is his top priority. Now, the Lord puts the issue before him where whichever way he goes he is doing a good thing, he is doing a right thing. This man faces a much more subtle problem than the pseudo intellectual. He faces good versus good. Which of the two good things should have priority? He cannot do them both simultaneously; he must choose one or the other and it is a test that actually causes many believers to peel off and leave doctrine forever, entering into a life of reversionism, warning discipline, intensive discipline, and eventually dying; in the meantime kept alive by the Lord just to distract or to be used as a test where other believers are concerned.

Leave the dead is our Lord’s command. And, of course, it means leave the dead in your thinking. There is time to concentrate on doctrine and that time is now. This may seem to be very cruel and very harsh as it comes from the Greek but you must remember that in the pressure of crisis when it is your turn to face personal disaster and when it is the turn of our nation to face the greatest disaster of all of our national life, your loved ones cannot help you. They cannot carry you no matter how close they are and no matter how wonderful the relationship. This disciple loves his father and he wants to go to his funeral. That is normal. But what he is about to learn will make or break him for life — the importance of depending upon the inner resources of Bible doctrine. The greatest thing that parents can do for their children is not give them Christmas presents, although certainly that is admirable, but to make sure that they have doctrine. That is what counts. There are men who want to leave a better world for their children but you can’t do it. All you can do is leave them the best of this world and the best of this world is Bible doctrine. There is no substitute for Bible doctrine resident in the soul.

“leave the dead to bury their own dead.” This disciple loves his father but he must not allow the memories of his father to distract him from the present course which he needs and which is laying his own ministry on the line. The culminative aorist tense views the separation from family in its entirety but it emphasises the existing results of boycotting his father’s funeral in the interest of a higher priority. The active voice, the distracted disciple is commanded to produce the action though he will not. The imperative mood is a command. This is a command to allow society to continue their normal function, such as a funeral, without criticising, without maligning. But do not let the normal function of society interfere with learning doctrine, that is the point.

Principle

1. The legitimate function of society must never distract the believer from learning doctrine. Society has a right to its legitimate function and the teaching of doctrine in a free society is permissible. They are two noble things. The question is: Which do you choose when you have a protocol responsibility and a responsibility to the Lord? That is the issue.

2. It might be pointed out that society frowns upon those who do not attend the funeral of their friends and loved ones. Immediately by omitting to attend the funeral you are under the disapprobation of society. And often the issue can be placed in a negative way: Which do you prefer, the disapprobation of God or the disapprobation of society?

3. Remember, while attendance at a funeral, or a party, a dance, a football game, a concert, is legitimate function of society, it is not sinful, evil or dishonourable. These normal pleasures of society can often conflict with the teaching of doctrine and therefore be a distraction to learning doctrine. The result is loss of momentum.

4. In a time of great personal problems, natural disasters, historical crises, all of the good times do not carry you. There is nothing wrong with having a good time but having a good time is merely a demonstration of your capacity for life, your capacity for happiness. It will not carry you in disaster.

This will though: the source of your good times, the source of your capacity for life, the source of your ability to be a great lover, the source of your ability to enjoy yourself socially is doctrine. And that same doctrine becomes the source of courage and integrity and honourable function in disaster. So it is the doctrine that must never be neglected.

5. Therefore, there is no substitute for Bible doctrine in the soul. It will carry you in normal times; it will make you a crisis personality in abnormal times.

6. Legitimate and inspirational pleasures simply do not sustain the believer in the crisis. It is fun while it lasts but fun never carries you through a crisis.

7. Pleasures are a legitimate manifestation of capacity for life. But it is the doctrine that sustains in adversity, not the pleasures.

8. Therefore, the pleasure and entertainment of life is not forbidden but if it conflicts with the teaching of doctrine then no matter how harmless the pleasure it will drag you down in time of historical disaster.

9. The conflict then is obvious. Society says to this man that he has a duty to his dead father to attend the funeral but the Lord says to this same man, Follow me, and this supersedes the demands and the protocol of society.

“let the dead go” — the word “dead” by the way is nekroj which means the body has collapsed. The soul and the spirit have entered into the presence of the Lord, so only the body is dead. The real person is in the presence of the Lord.

Now that is only half of the answer. The other half is found in Luke 9:60, “but as for you go and proclaim elsewhere the kingdom of God.” We start out with the proleptic use of the second singular pronoun su, meaning you and only you. You have a message to preach, move on. “Go,” the aorist active participle of a)perxomai. We have the constative aorist for an action or a fact extended over a period of time. He is to learn more doctrine as he is now and then preach doctrine. This funeral would be a distraction, a break, it would keep him from matriculating in the great course on the Dynamics for Disaster. The active voice: the distracted disciple has a spiritual gift which demands that he communicate doctrine. This is the imperative use of the participle which is characteristic of the Koine Greek. “But you and only you, go.” The main verb is a command to communicate doctrine, diaggellw, to teach or proclaim everywhere, and keep proclaiming everywhere. The progressive present denotes linear aktionsart: stop what you are doing, study and teach. “The kingdom of God,” a reference to the plan of God as it existed just prior to the Church Age. He must persist in the function of learning doctrine and teaching. Motivation for persistence comes from the doctrine resident in the soul but he is distracted by social protocol and refuses to go any farther.

Principle

1. This man has a spiritual gift and enough doctrine to function as a communicator. He is either an evangelist or a Bible teacher but he probably is both at this time.

2. Notice: He does not have to wait until he is mature to start communicating doctrine. Though he was a great teacher he would fail the historical crisis because he did not keep plugging, keep going, keep learning. He did not persist in the perception of doctrine.

3. This disciple had a choice between human good and divine good, and he chose human good. And by choosing good he destroyed his ministry and eliminated himself for any historical disaster. This man fails even before the course is begun.

4. He chose human good attending his father’s funeral rather than divine good, communication of doctrine.

5. Where there is a conflict between good and good the believer must choose divine good over human good, and this requires sophomore discernment.

6. While you may procrastinate in learning doctrine the historical crisis will not delay and wait for you to learn. In other words, God will always give you an opportunity to learn the doctrine necessary to face the crisis. If you procrastinate during the time of opportunity there will be no procrastination of the crisis. The crisis will occur. No believer ever faces historical disaster without having the opportunity to have resident doctrine with which to cope and failure of believers in disaster means failure in the period allotted by God for learning the necessary doctrine.

Notice a contrast

The first distracted disciple made a decision which he did not keep because he was a pseudo intellectual, therefore arrogant and under pressure became emotional. All intellectuals become emotional under pressure.

The second distracted disciple made the wrong decision. He decided for human good rather than divine good. Failure to decide for divine good results in the modus operandi of human good which eventuates in the function of evil.

Principles

1. Because many believers make the same decision as this distracted disciple they have become involved in social action, promoting social welfare, etc. They have even become Marxists, antipolice, pro-criminal.

2. Others follow this pattern by allowing pleasure, social life, entertainment to distract them from learning doctrine on a consistent basis.

3. As a result they are not prepared for either personal or historical disaster.

4. Personal disaster might include dying, and death for which the believer minus doctrine is not prepared. Death is the one thing in which you participate alone, like pain.

5. People can sympathise and be very compassionate but you do the hurting and you do the dying.

6. For this disaster you need doctrine as for any disaster.

7. While this distracted disciple was distracted by the protocol of society the next one, our third, found in Luke 9:61-62 has a love problem. He is distracted because he is in love. He is the kind of a person who is unstable because he puts love and love of human beings above everything else.

Human security vs Bible Doctrine; Concentration; Principle/the bird distraction

“and the birds of the air have nests.” We have again the connective use of the conjunction kai indicating that one part of the animal kingdom is not enough to describe the failure of this particular person. We have the nominative plural subject from petainon, a bird which is not as powerful or not as strong, or cannot contend on the ground with animals, but who by virtue of having wings is in a position of security from those who move along the ground, like the fox. He is therefore called under the descriptive genitive of o)uranoj, the birds of the heavens or the skies. We have the accusative plural direct object from the noun kataskhnwsij, a tent, a roost, a dwelling place.

It appears that Jesus is now making an analogy between the emotional and impulsive scribe and the two animals involved here. The fox is clever, so is the scribe. The fox is a smart animal and so is the scribe. But being smart and having no contact with truth makes you unstable smart, emotional smart; and the smart person is never able to cope with the reality of a catastrophe unless he has roots in doctrine, roots in truth. Unbelievers can cope with disaster provided they know some establishment truth. That gives them patriotism. The fox has a lair, a den, or a burrow which he has stolen. He doesn’t build his own. He is so smart that he can acquire it from others; so is the scribe. The fox in the lair has what he calls security but security is never security as long as some more powerful creature or craftier is around. Human security, then, is challenged daily and human security proves insecurity. Those who depend on human security are always insecure and they are inflexible regarding the nonessential. Human security is a nonessential. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ human security is totally nonessential. A disaster always removes human security. The best preparation for disaster are the inner resources of Bible doctrine in your soul. That is what counts. But you are not going to learn doctrine this holiday because you are too busy doing your bit; too excited about your social life and things you are doing. And when you are distracted by the season and from concentrating on doctrine you are not prepared for anything. Your security as a human being comes from what you have in the soul, not what you have in the bank, not what you possess in any situation. By the way, courage is concentration on inner resources. Human security is a distraction from gutting-it-out from doctrine, plugging, concentrating on the intake. The same concentrator is also used on the output — application. The only real security for you and for me is in the plan of God — X+Y+Z. That is all the security you need. The secret to security is the secret to life, what you have in your soul.

“and the birds of the air have roosting places”

The principle of the bird distraction

1. While the fox is analogous to the cleverness of the scribe the bird illustrates his prominence, wealth and success. The scribe is smart, he is a pseudo intellectual, he has a high IQ, he is brilliant. So the fox illustrates that side of the scribe. The bird illustrates his human security. The scribe is a wealthy man, a successful man.

2. The Bible must be interpreted in the time in which it is written. This is a basic principle of hermeneutics. This was written before the invention of the shotgun, which has destroyed bird security!

3. The bird in the atmosphere was much safer than the fox on the ground and the nest of the bird offered more security than the den or the lair of the fox. The original owner might return and defeat the fox.

4. The bird, then, represents the wealth, the success, the fame, the approbation; in summary, the human security which belonged to the scribe.

5. The scribe is famous, wealthy, secure in his success, and he was not inclined to leave his place of for the unknown circumstances and discomfort across the sea. He was a dropout, he did not matriculate in the course on disaster dynamics.

6. Although the scribe is clever like the fox and secure like the bird in the air, he still is depending upon straws. He has no foundation of rock, it is all sand. And he represents to us in this study the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ who will not depart from conventional comforts of society for the unseen benefits of growth in grace through the perception of doctrine. It is too inconvenient to come to Bible class with any consistency. It is difficult every day to be wide awake and alert. There is one thing that you have to learn sooner or later: the secret to success in learning Bible doctrine is consistency.

Like body-building, do it every day.

7. A believer who clings tenaciously to the visible, conventional pleasures of life and security and refuses doctrine which provides the very meaning and purpose of blessing and happiness, never passes the crisis test.

8. The believer who clings to the conventional accoutrements of success and happiness is never prepared for historical crisis and disaster. Such a believer discovers too late that everything he has associated from happiness is taken from him; everything he associates with security. That is a part of the disaster. Therefore, with everything gone he collapses, he moves into panic palace, he is in hysteria and he usually dies horribly and miserably without ever finding out the true meaning of life — X+Y+Z. That is the bird distraction.

“but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” we have had a series of kais, now all of

a sudden we go to de, “but.” The post positive conjunctive particle de is used to connect two clauses in contrast; the contrast between our Lord and the scribe. The scribe: all human security; the Lord Jesus Christ: all security based upon thought, doctrine in the soul. And the true issue is not having a place to lay your head but having something in your head when you lay your head down. It isn’t where the head is located, on a pillow or on a stone, it is what is in the head. But the scribe will never understand that so our Lord must deal with the scribe in terms of his own thought — security, a hotel reservation.

“the Son of man,” title of His humanity because, you see, Jesus Christ as God doesn’t lay His head anywhere. As God He is eternal and also omnipresent.

Question: Where does omnipresence lays His head?

“hath not where to lay his head.” Principle: Occupation with human security plus the uncertainty of the future causes negative volition toward doctrine which destroys the believer before historical crisis occurs. If you are destroyed and neutralised before you cannot endure in.

Now you and I in talking to the scribe might have said we have no place to put the body. And we would have used the word soma referring to our body. But our Lord uses kefalh referring to His head. And in doing so He places importance on the portion of the anatomy that contains the soul and where the thought is located.

Principle

1. Too many believers are defeated by the uncertainty of normal times. Normal times have a lot of normal uncertainty and believers who are defeated by the uncertainty of normal times simply collapse and are destroyed by historical disaster.

2. The scribe with his superficial scholarship and his pseudo intellectualism, his dominating spurious

emotion, his security orientation, his lack of a faith-rest function. all of these things have combined in his life to distract him from doctrine, he is the distracted disciple. As the distracted disciple he will never make it. He will never have happiness or blessing as an imputation from God, he is simply not

going to make it.

3. This believer will never advance to live out his life as one that glorifies the Lord but he will

continue his life in discipline, misery, failure, and he will die the sin unto death.

5. His only use at this time, then, is to act as a test point for his friends who are positive toward

doctrine and he will form a cadre of aggressors for the FTXs [field training exercises] of life. See, there will be a lot of positive believers after salvation and as babies they will have at least one distraction test from a “sweet, charming, lovely, wonderful believer,” someone they admire in their babyhood, and that person is a reversionist who will be used to try to distract them. And when they pass that test they will move into adolescence and once

again they will have the same test. God keeps these people alive to form a cadre to test other believers.

Sometimes it is a father, a mother, children, someone you love, someone with whom you have had a lifetime association perhaps, but someone who is kept alive determine if he is more important to you than Bible doctrine.

Principle

1. The scribe is a type of believer who because of his arrogance and cleverness is impressed with the superficialities of life, such as approbation from large crowds, approbation from powerful speaking. Teaching and popularity of our Lord Jesus Christ have attracted him; he has even believed in Christ, but pseudo intellectuals, no matter how smart they are, have no roots in truth and they have no orientation to reality.

2. The importance of doctrine eluded him in his pursuit of the superficial, the emotional, and the pseudo intellectual.

3. This motivation was totally erroneous and he never caught the importance of doctrine from the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ.

4. Without doctrine he was not even qualified to face personal adversity or historical disaster.

5. The impulsive, emotional believer does not have either the motivation or the momentum to persist in

his concentration on doctrine. (He can do it once in awhile; he can do it when he is in a jamb but he

cannot do it consistently.) The principle of the plan of God becomes, therefore, abstruse.

6. Transient emotion and temporary impulse distract from the true purpose of the plan of God — the advance to maturity and the imputation of divine blessing from the justice of God.

7. Dedication without doctrine, enthusiasm without doctrine destroys momentum in the Christian way of life.

8. The scribe was not rejected by our Lord but permitted to use his own volition, make his own decision, and his decision was quite obvious, he is not going. Emotion and enthusiasm has no carrying power in the Christian way of life.

Simple summary

1. The fox was clever, the bird was secure, Jesus takes the analogy to Himself and in reality construes it as an analogy to the scribe.

2. The fox was clever like the scribe and the bird was secure like the scribe. But his cleverness was shallow, based on impulse and emotion. He was definitely security-conscious.

3. His security was shallow, based on human standards and human function.

4. Neither would provide the scribe with what he wanted in life and both would be his delusion of grandeur — neither security nor power.

5. His cleverness produced arrogance while his human security produced complacency. Both destroyed his capacity for life, his capacity for happiness, his capacity for love, and his capacity for adversity.

So we have to conclude that his emotion was like a tumbleweed which blows away in the dust and wind of the storm. It has no ruler, no authority, no help, no strength, no power from Bible doctrine.

The second distracted disciple, verses 21-22

These are dropouts, these are people who will never matriculate in the course of divine dynamics for disaster. Many believers will fail before the disaster occurs.

Verse 21 — This is the protocol disciple. We begin with the post positive particle de used as a transitional particle here. De is a transitional particle and it indicates that this is a new category of believer who does not handle the catastrophes and disasters of life. Next we have the nominative singular from the adjective e(teroj, another of a different kind. He is a different category. He is a believer just like the previous one but he represents an entirely different category. “Now another disciple.” We have the subject now, maqhthj, disciple. The maq part is a prefix and it denotes a man who directs his mind to something, and it indicates a student in reality, someone who is under the authority and under the teaching of someone else. The noun does not connote completeness or deficiency of education but it denotes rather the process of learning. Furthermore, the learning always follows a very set pattern of perception and conduct which proceeds deliberately according to a specific plan. In other words, every disciple is a student without portfolio. He has no rights, his privacy must be protected, he is under the authority of teaching and he is definitely persona non grata as far as any outside influence is concerned. In a technical sense this word for disciple, maqhthj, implies the direct dependence of a student on the authority of the teacher. To be a maqhthj then is to be a student. It does not mean a follower in the sense of imitation, it means a student learning doctrine, a student learning a subject. We are not following in the footsteps of Jesus, we are learning His message.

“said” — the aorist active indicative of the verb legw. Each time someone comes up to Jesus with an excuse and this is the verb to make the excuse. And the dative singular indirect object from the intensive pronoun a)utoj indicates that as a believer he recognises the authority of Jesus Christ . Correctly translated: “Now another of his students said to him.” He recognises that our Lord has given a command and he recognises the value of that command and its importance.

“suffer me first to go and bury my father.” The vocative singular from kurioj indicates that this believer has much more doctrine than the pseudo intellectual. The pseudo intellectual professor called our Lord “Master” while this believer calls Him “Lord” kurioj, recognising a principle: the one who calls Him “Master” (professor) is arrogant. In the first dropout he could never learn enough doctrine to be any more than a spiritual baby because arrogance resists the authority of a teacher. All pseudo intellectuals are eclectic, they choose what they like and they set themselves as the absolute authority in any field of intellectual endeavour. This man is not going to fall into that trap. But

believers who have had teaching but not enough teaching are always in trouble. To know a little and to assume that a little is a lot is to destroy yourself. You see, you must persist and keep plugging, keep plugging. Knowing a little has the same problem as knowing nothing, it creates arrogance in the soul, because the person who stops learning knows a little and assumes that he knows a lot.

This believer, however, is very concerned about what people think of him. This is going to be his problem. He might be classified, then, as the protocol or the conventional type. It never occurs to him that he does not have to conform socially. Society says that you have to do certain things certain ways and therefore because you are afraid of what people will think you won’t do it.

Conformity to the regulations of society is more important to this man than persistence in the perception of doctrine. And we have an excellent illustration: a funeral. The attitude toward a funeral then is the same as the attitude toward a funeral today. If you miss your father’s funeral you are low on the totem pole of society. What a terrible thing to do! No one will ever speak to you again.

Where the protocol of society is concerned this disciple is inflexible. Protocol of society demands flexibility, not inflexibility because society is essentially a nonessential. Protocol is not all that important and therefore flexibility is important. Traditional observance of a funeral takes precedence over the intake of doctrine with this man. Conformity to the customs of society is more important than obedience to the command. Here is a person who puts his family before the Lord and yet our Lord made it very perspicuous that doctrine must be first. There is nothing wrong with loving your family, in fact it is recommended. Families are wonderful things but we have already studied the principle of what is called essential and nonessential. And when the essential is Bible doctrine for the believer, the only basis for spiritual growth — daily persistent perception of doctrine — then family becomes a nonessential, along with many other things in life that are regarded as important.

This conventional believer is calling our Lord “Lord” because he knows it is correct to address Jesus as Lord. He is a conventional type, he is a protocol believer. He calls Him Lord, not in recognition of His authority but, because it is the correct thing to say. He is influenced more by what people think than what doctrine says. Public opinion is more important than personal opinion based on doctrine. This kind of a person can never survive a disaster.

In Matthew 10:34-39 — “Do not think that I have come to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” In other words, I have come to divide. I have come to cause antagonism and to challenge your scale of values. Am I more important than all of these things? And people say: Yes, you are Lord.

He says: I am only on earth for the next three years but I am leaving my mind, my thinking behind in the guise of the Word of God. The Bible is the mind of Christ, says 1 Corinthians 2:16, and if you really mean that it will be Bible doctrine before anything else in your life.

The first advent of Christ is an invasion. It is an invasion into Satan’s kingdom; it is the invasion of Christ to be the divider of people and this includes the close ties of family relationship. The cross and doctrine will always divide people, and you have to choose between doctrine and what other people think. Even in the most loving and intimate relationships of life, such as expressed in verse 35, so that family schisms come in variations in attitudes toward doctrine as well as the content of doctrine in the soul, or lack of the same. Doctrine resident in the soul also causes strong love for members of one’s family and greater capacity for love.

And Jesus said in verse 36: “And a man’s enemies are the members of his own family”

Verse 37 — “The one loving father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; the one loving son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

The issue here is very simple: Is Bible doctrine more important than the most intimate ties of life? The greatest issue is always doctrine versus the details of life, whether it is family, friends, loved ones, money, success, pleasure, social life, sex, status symbols, or whatever you consider you to be important. And any distraction to the perception of doctrine, then, is a detail of life about which one must exercise great flexibility, while about doctrine he must be indefatigable as well as persistent in perception. Doctrine is both motivation and momentum then for the fulfilment of the plan of God and this second disciple is distracted by family responsibilities and the protocol of society.

In verse 38 — “And he who does not pick up his cross and continue following after me, is not worthy of me.” This means carrying the cross, severing family ties or intimate relationships to put doctrine first. Bearing the cross is overcoming distraction in the perception of doctrine. Carrying the cross was a disgrace and a condemnation in the Roman world; it expressed public opinion to the maximum. The disciple who is not willing to pick up his cross and follow the Lord demonstrates that he is distracted, family comes first. This disciple must attend the funeral of his father so as not to offend public opinion. It isn’t going to help his father; his father is either in heaven or hell, and he can remember him with great love and tenderness right where he is. Even the finest protocol of life cannot replace perception of doctrine.

Verse 39 — “The one having discovered his soul [the daily function of GAP] shall destroy it [false standards of the soul are put before doctrine]; and the one having voided his soul [through consistent perception of doctrine] for my sake shall discover it.” In other words, there is your capacity for life, your capacity for love, your capacity for happiness, and above all, your ability to handle historical disaster.

Matthew 8:21 — “suffer me first to go bury my father.” We have the aorist active imperative of the verb e)pitrepw which means to permit, to allow, to order, to give permission. This disciple had enough doctrine to know that he must get leave, he must get permission, he recognises our Lord’s authority to that point. He was very sure that the Lord would give him permission. After all, this is a good excuse. It is a legitimate excuse. It just so happens that at this point it conflicts with a higher cause. (This does not mean that you have failed the Lord if you attend someone’s funeral) The issue here is a conflict between the protocol of society and the perception of Bible doctrine.

“permit me,” give me permission. The dative singular indirect object from the personal pronoun e)gw. He is saying, “Give me permission” — good manners. A gnomic aorist is used here for the fact that the second disciple regarded the permission as already granted, and to him it was a mere formality. He was so sure the Lord would grant him leave that he put it in a gnomic aorist tense. He knows that permission will be granted! With this there is an adverb which means that this is his priority, prwton, “first,” the adverb of priority. The priority is given conventionality under the aorist active infinitive of a)perxomai. [The Lord says go across the sea and he wants to go to a funeral.] Again we have an aorist tense but this is a culminative aorist viewing the departure in its entirety but regarding it from the viewpoint of the father’s funeral. The gnomic and culminative aorists actually form up in a very similar way and it indicates that this man is so sure the Lord will say Yes that he is only going through the formality. He doesn’t want to leave the Lord with the Lord thinking ill of him.

This also shows something else: he is very arrogant. All arrogant people are very sensitive to public opinion; they are very concerned as to what people think. He must get to that funeral because of what people will think, but he must not leave our Lord thinking ill of him. [You need not go through life falling apart because someone dislikes you. You have to live your life as unto the Lord, you can’t live your life as unto people] This man will never advance, he will fail in the crisis, he is not going to have any happiness or understand the Christian way of life at any point, simply because he is constantly concerned about that people think. The guideline for his life is do nothing to offend anyone, and if someone is offended lean over backwards to change your lifestyle if necessary just so they will appreciate you! You cannot spend your life being sensitive to public opinion. In your spiritual life you will eventually become sensitive to the Lord and Bible doctrine, and what His desire is. And that must be paramount; that is your number one priority.

The verb prwton indicates the wrong priority. He doesn’t have enough doctrine to have his priorities straight; he does have enough doctrine to be a sophomore. To this disciple something more important than following the Lord is obedience to the command to follow the protocol of society. And he now states it: “and bury my father.”

There is nothing he can do for his father now. He loves his father who is now dead. He can love his father right where he is; in fact, his love and appreciation for his father will increase if he learns doctrine, if he crosses the lake. But it was not to be that way with him.

Principles

1. This disciple became entangled with and distracted by public opinion and the protocol of society.

2. If he failed to attend his father’s funeral society would ostracise him; society would not understand. What society does not understand society ostracises. Ignorance is the basis for the function of society.

3. This believer is thinking more of approbation of people than he does of approbation of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is because he is arrogant. He is a sweet person, a nice person.

4. As long as there is no conflict it was convenient to follow the Lord, but now that a conflict exists it becomes inconvenient. The protocol believer is always destroyed by the inconvenience of learning doctrine. Remember that this believer has learned some doctrine but never enough to advance to maturity. He does not understand the importance of perseverance in perception of doctrine.

5. He lives out his life under the discipline of reversionism. He lives and dies the sin unto death in Y radical.

In life we make our decisions regarding eternity by our attitude toward Christ, not after death. His father was a believer. At this point he was absent from the body and face to face with the Lord.

Are you a distracted believer?

The case of the third distracted disciple, Luke 9:61-62: “And another also said, I will follow thee, Lord; but let me first bid farewell to them that are at home at my house.” We begin with the transitional use of the post positive conjunctive particle de. These particles are always very important; they link one factor with another and indicate that even though this is in Luke it is sequential with what was studied in Matthew chapter eight. It is a part of the sequence, even though it is found in another book. We translate that de “now,” indicating the sequence is continued but a new category is introduced. Next we have the adjunctive use of the conjunction kai, meaning “also.” “Now also.” Next is the nominative singular subject from the adjective e(teroj. This means that while he is a believer he is a different category of believer, another of a different category. Next we have the verb of communication, the aorist active indicative from the verb legw, to say, to speak, to communicate. Translation: “Now another disciple also said.” He addresses our Lord in exactly the same way as the second dropout, the protocol disciple. He uses the vocative singular kurioj, “Lord.” He recognises our Lord’s authority as does the second category who also uses the vocative kurioj but he rejects it by rejecting Bible doctrine. This disciple is sincere but sincerity is not a virtue in the Christian life. Sincerity is considered a virtue by the emotional but while we all have emotion and while there is a definite place for emotion it is not the criterion for the spiritual life. He is emotional but emotion is only bona fide as a responder to the doctrinal content of his soul. This believer has a love priority problem which is going to become a distraction to him. Because of a love problem he is about to lose out with doctrine, become distracted, and therefore will never take the course in divine dynamics.

“And another disciple also said, Lord.” And first of all he states his dedication. The people who constantly have to state their dedication usually are operating on something that is too weak to sustain that dedication, and the too weak to sustain that dedication is emotional revolt of the soul. So we have the future active indicative of the verb a)kolouqew, to follow. “I will follow.” The predictive future is for an event which is expected to occur in future time and the predictive future indicates he will not follow or execute this command immediately but eventually he intends to do so. Good intentions without immediate execution cancel motivation. The disciple intends to produce the action of the verb after an elapse of the distraction. He intends to procrastinate and then he thinks he will get back with it but when there is impending disaster procrastination is tantamount to negative volition toward doctrine. He knows that he is obligated to learn doctrine and prepare for the crisis and matriculate in this course but he is going to procrastinate. With this we have the dative singular indirect object from the personal pronoun su, you.

Principle

1. I will follow you, is the expression of good intention and motivation. It also indicates clarity of the issue in the mind of the disciple. He understands the issue because of the three categories he is the most advanced in doctrine.

2. The third category of disciple understood the issue and what decision he should make. But he is distracted from good intention by a love priority problem. There is no love of a person in this life that should exceed the love of doctrine.

3. Good intentions are no guarantee of proper execution, proper function, in the Christian life. Good intention without follow-up action is no intention.

4. The expression of good intention does not mean the execution of the Christian way of life.

5. Expressing good intention is no substitute for the perception of doctrine which is the true momentum of the Christian life. For those who live a life of convenience, they cannot make the transition into the inconvenience of human disaster.

6. This believer recognises the importance of doctrine, for as the next verse clearly reveals, he has already put his hand to the plough. Putting your hand to the plough is the daily perception of Bible doctrine.

7. This believer made the right decision to learn doctrine on a daily basis but he is distracted by love for the visible as over against love for the invisible. In this case human love priority sets aside Bible doctrine.

So this believer made a right decision but he didn’t have the guts to keep going with it. He didn’t have the persistence, the perseverance, the constant priority in view — doctrine first because doctrine is the mind of Christ, and you do not love Christ, you are not occupied with Christ, without doctrine in the soul.

8. This was a family man. In contrast to the previous believer the family was all alive and well. Not only that but they want son, Daddy, or whoever, to come home! This believer wants to visit those whom he loves.

“but” — the adversative use of that same post positive particle de. Always watch the conjunctions in life. So and so is a fine preacher, BUT. So and so is a nice man, BUT. Next we have an adverb, proton meaning “first.” This is the adverb of priority. There is always something that you must do FIRST. And just like the protocol disciple this man is a gentleman. He uses the same verb, the aorist active imperative e)pitrepw, give me permission, allow me. The gnomic aorist tense indicates that the third disciple regarded the permission as granted, just as the second. He assumes that this is a mere formality which he goes through and permission will be granted.

So far we have had personal pronouns in the dative case in order to indicate that everything that is being requested can destroy you or make you, simply because these requests indicate and reveal the motivation of the soul. (How are you motivated?) And therefore there are no accusative cases in these requests, always the dative case. Why? The dative case not only reveals what you are thinking, how you are motivated, but it also indicates that by making such a request (in this case) you have wrong priorities. And having wrong priorities means having wrong motivation. And having wrong motivation means loss of momentum and loss of momentum means failure in times of disaster, as well as in normal times.

Then he states his request in the aorist middle infinitive from the verb a)potassomai, to say farewell. It is an interesting word because a)po means that eventually you must tear yourself from them and tassomai means that to do so your mind must be organised for tassw in the Greek always has the connotation of self-discipline, respect for authority, recognition of greater and more important things in life which means there comes a time in the life of every person when responsibility, duty, honour, must take precedence over one’s personal love of someone else. And always in life there will be a test of your sense of duty, your sense of responsibility, your understanding of historical circumstances more important than those who are dearest to you and who you love the most.

And this also demands reciprocity because in noble and honourable and virtuous love the one who is being left always understands. And if her love (usually it is the woman who is left) is so great that she is willing to permit sacrifice, then this is a magnificent thing. A)potassomai, to say goodbye where true love exists so that in the parting those who must sacrifice and see the loved one go will be understanding rather than complaining and whining. And the one who leaves, leaves with the encouragement of knowing that he is loved and that he will be missed and that they will be waiting when he gets back.

The constative aorist is of course for an action that will take place over a period of time. He wants to spend time with his family before “the big push.” He wants to delay the ship for a week before it crosses the Sea of Tiberius while he has “Christmas” with his family. This man is very selfish in his love for his family. There is nothing wrong with loving your family, in fact it is required. But you can have the kind of love which is selfish and if you have a selfish love (which includes jealousy and pettiness, and other types of reaction) you destroy with a selfish love your true capacity for love. For true love must have a sense of sacrifice and it must be sensitive to the object of love.

The love which is possessive is no love at all. Did you ever see a horse with a tough mouth? He is not sensitive to the light rein at all. When you become possessive and jealous inevitably you destroy the very wonderful thing that you have. And love, like everything else in life, does not stand still. It is moving at all times, forward or backward. Being possessive strangles love, smothers love. If you smother something you destroy it.

“to those” and then we have a prepositional phrase, e)ij plus the accusative singular of o)ikoj, “house,” but refers here to a family, “in my house.”

Corrected translation: “Now another disciple also said, Lord, I will follow you; but first give me permission to say goodbye to those in my family.”

Note:

1. First we note that there are many similarities between the second and the third distracted disciples. There are also great differences. This believer is not distracted by the protocol of society as was the second. He is distracted because of his intense love for his wife, his children and his family. At this point he must not allow love to deter the Lord’s plan for his life.

2. It is doctrine which has provided for this believer the capacity for love which he has for his wife and his children. And this is normal and virtuous and wonderful in life.

3. Therefore, this disciple demonstrates that even honourable and virtuous functions in life can sometimes (not always) be a distraction to the most important thing in life which is Bible doctrine, the written Word, resulting in love for the living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.

4. This is a normal request made to our Lord but it is an abnormal time in which to make it — the approach of disaster.

5. This believer will fail in a crisis because he cannot distinguish between normal and abnormal circumstances of history and, further, because his priorities are wrong. He learned enough doctrine to almost reach maturity; he had capacity for love, but he did not know how to handle his capacity. Something was lost in gaining the capacity and what was lost was number one priority, Bible doctrine.

6. The emphasis here is placed on following the Lord into the unknown where natural and historical disaster will occur, forming a course in disaster dynamics.

7. This distracted disciple has placed category two and three love above category one love.

8. His family, whom he loves dearly, have now become a distraction to him, not because they are seeking to distract him from doctrine but because from his own free will and his own scale of values he has distracted himself.

9. Just as the previous disciple was a believer who had been exercising his spiritual gift in communication of doctrine, so this disciple has almost advanced to maturity but will fail before reaching maturity. He will fail because he has wrong priorities and because he lacks something that every one of us must have in life, appreciation of the Source. When you start to develop capacity for love it is never consolidated until in your soul you are a grateful individual. We must never lose track of the origin of blessing. The origin of blessing is God Himself.

You lose something in love when you forget the origin because in remembering the origin you always have humility. When you forget the origin you become arrogant. When people succeed in life and forget the origin of their success, they fail, even though they have the accoutrements of promotion and success. Don’t ever forget the origin.

Many people fail the disaster test for a number of reasons

a. Wrong priorities. Nothing must come before perception and inculcation of doctrine, for doctrine is how the Lord makes love to us. And we forget the Source when we forget doctrine.

b. Being confused about the subject of love. Occupation with Christ is the key to both personal and impersonal love.

c. Failure to properly interpret contemporary history results in not being prepared for disaster when it comes. The only preparation for disaster is to go back to the Source. And how do we remember the Source? Perception of doctrine. This requires plugging, learning doctrine every day.

The answer to the third dropout is found in verse 62, the last verse of Luke chapter 9, “And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

This verse has nothing to do with evangelism at all; it is a challenge to the believer who has already started learning doctrine and yet does not continue in this vain. The exegesis: we have first of all the transitional use of the post positive conjunctive particle de, which is correctly translated “now.” Next we have the nominative singular subject from the proper noun I)esouj, Jesus. With this we have the aorist active indicative from the verb legw which refers to communication. And it can be translated “said” or anything that indicates our Lord is using words to explain to this man the real issue and why he is wrong. The constative aorist gathers up into one entirety what our Lord says about the plough. This man will fail and our Lord explains to all of us why he failed.

Then we have proj plus the accusative singular from a)utoj, “face to face with him.” This prepositional phrase instead of the dative indirect object indicates that this was the last time this disciple ever faced our Lord. He came very close to reaching maturity but he failed at this point and this is the last time he ever saw the Lord, until he died. Apparently he was dissatisfied with our Lord’s answer and he departed. Translation: “Now Jesus replied face to face with him.”

Now the reply: the nominative singular from the adjective o)udeij, “no one.” And this is a dogmatic statement which is the end of the line for a man who almost cracked the maturity barrier and then slid into reversionism. Jesus answers him with a principle rather than a personal admonition and therefore He says, No one. This man has had enough doctrine so that he can pick up on the principle without Him saying, You. This man almost made it but not quite, like so many who start out on doctrine and then peel off.

Then our Lord explains what the man has been doing, the aorist active participle of e)piballw. Ballw means to throw, e)pi means on, throw upon, to cast upon. Here where a plough is used it merely means to grip the plough and start ploughing. It means from the word ballw that the plough is already in operation, that he has his team and that he has his hand on the plough and he is ploughing the ground and has been for some time. In fact he ploughed all of the way, almost, to maturity. But he didn’t quite make it. The last test he failed.

With this we have the accusative singular direct object from the noun xeir. At the time that this was written a plough had two handles and one held it by the handles in order to guide it as it was pulled through the ground, forming the furrows. “after having put his hand” is the way we will translate this aorist active participle. Now the constative aorist gathers into one entirety momentum in the plan of God — X+Y+Z. Here was a man who had not only gone all of the way through X radical and believed in Christ but in Y radical he was almost at the point of reaching maturity. He had been ploughing for several years — taking in doctrine, taking in doctrine — and was almost there when he failed.

You can be positive day in and day out but as you are positive you develop certain things: a capacity for life, capacity for love, capacity for happiness. It is the capacity for love that will always get you. You finally have this capacity because doctrine has given you, the Lord has given you, a wonderful family, persons you love, and you forget the Source. All of a sudden the object of love, what God has provided, now becomes number one priority. The Source is completely buried and forgotten.

The word for “plough” is a)rotron. And we have e)pi plus the accusative — motion, the plough is moving. Ploughing is learning doctrine, it is the daily function of GAP, it is advancing in the plan of God through perception of doctrine, the only way to advance. This believer has been positive for a long time but through his own volitional function he has permitted a distraction from continuing into maturity. This is his last test and from this test it would be an easy roll into eternity but he does not pass the test. In fact he fails and never again does he return, he never recovers.

Family love has taken precedence over love of Christ, love of the Word of God, so that this believer became negative and fell into reversionism. And his fall into reversionism is now described by the phrase, “and looking back.” This is his distraction. We have the connective kai and the present active participle blepw, glance. This is in contrast to o(raw, to look and observe with thinking. Blepw is the distraction verb. This man is already glancing back, he has his eyes on someone he loves. And notice: this man is going to lose the very thing he loves by putting it first, by giving it number one priority over doctrine. Because whenever a person goes into reversionism he loses his capacity for life and the person he loved yesterday he hates tomorrow. We have nothing without doctrine and sooner or later we are going to have to learn that.

“looking back” — the family are called, in effect, “things behind,” the preposition e)ij plus the accusative neuter plural from the definite article plus the adverb of place o)pisw, “the things behind.” The things behind not only refer to this man but to the other two categories. In effect this applies to all three categories: first of all dropout number one, the pseudo intellectual believer; dropout number two, the protocol believer; dropout number three, the love priority believer. None of these people can handle disaster. They will fall apart in normal times, therefore they are total casualties in times of great disaster.

So this believer, like the second distracted disciple, has been positive toward doctrine but he has permitted through his own volitional function a distraction to occur. From his own freewill he has distracted himself from the Source of love by giving love a priority over the Source.

Principle

1. Looking toward the things behind: the “things behind” can include many things. There are many distractions beside love and love priorities. These things are not wrong, immoral or sinful, they are distractions. The more you grow spiritually the more subtle become the distractions.

2. For this believer it is obviously love of his wife. Love of his wife is not wrong but it is not number one priority. You can’t put the cart before the horse. Capacity for love has to precede love, that is why a lot of people get married too soon.

3. Ordinarily, these objects of love synchronise and there is no conflict, no conflict between Christianity and loving your family. But there is a historical crisis approaching and priorities in the category of loved ones must be clarified. And at the same time a lesson must be taught: as you learn doctrine your love and thoughtfulness and sensitivity should be greater, to your children it should be greater.

4. The Lord Jesus Christ must receive number one priority and this is not accomplished by saying, “The Lord is number one.” It is accomplished by taking in doctrine every day. The daily reception of doctrine is far more important than anything else in your life, including love and intimacy of family relationship, which is a wonderful thing but it is not on the same level as doctrine, nothing is. The very ability to love these people is based on doctrine, and always when you separate doctrine from your love life you destroy your capacity to love. There is no way in this life that you can divorce yourself from the Source of all things wonderful and come out ahead.

5. This man is not prepared for the crisis and like the other two disciples will become an historical casualty.

6. This disciple in his arrogance will fail to understand the analogy answer and will become disenchanted and disillusioned with our Lord. He will become disenchanted with our Lord for not appreciating love in human relationships — that will be his excuse.

He will actually resist our Lord because he thought: “Well now, He talks about loving everyone (which He did).” But he never talked about loving people from their own ability. He talks about loving people with the ability of God, and that means Bible doctrine. Where did you get the idea that you have the ability to love? Put it together with the total depravity of man and you have the right answer. None of us have the ability to love and the ones who are smart in observing people realise that. Love is never maintained at a certain level by anyone. Even as we do not have the ability to save ourselves we do not have the ability to be consistent in love and even increase love on a daily basis. Because, you see, it is the Source that counts, the mind of Christ, Bible doctrine.

7. This disciple in his arrogance will fail to understand the answer and again he will be disenchanted, disillusioned, and this led to distraction.

8. To this disciple there seems to be some inconsistency between our Lord’s answer and His message on the Sermon on the Mount.

9. Furthermore, prior to this command to cross the sea our Lord had honoured a devoted father, a Roman centurion, who came to Capernaum on behalf of his sick son. Jesus commended the centurion for his faith, not his love. The centurion loved his son but he came all of the way to this spot where the crowd is to have the Lord heal his son. He was commended for his faith, not his love.

Things we love in this life, human relationships, can become a distraction from doctrine so that we become spiritual casualties. Principle: A casualty before the crisis never survives the crisis.

Many believers are eliminated from facing the historical disaster because they have failed the perceptive test. This believer had enough doctrine for discernment, he made a good start with his positive volition toward doctrine, but he became distracted and disillusioned. And actually, he distracted himself and disillusioned himself.

“is fit for the kingdom of God” is not a correct translation, except for “is,” the present active indicative of e)imi. This is a retroactive progressive present denoting what has begun in the past with distraction and negative volition toward doctrine, and continues into the present. The active voice, the third distracted disciple produces the action and the indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal action from the viewpoint of reality. With this we have a predicate nominative singular from a compound noun e)uqhtoj, eu means well or rightly, qhtoj comes from tiqhmi, to place. And it means to be well arranged, to be adapted, useful. So we will translate it “well adjusted.” This emphasises the second adjustment to the justice of God which is the imputation of divine blessing at maturity. And the corrected translation: “Now Jesus replied face to face with him, No one, after putting his hand on the plough, and looking toward the things behind, is well-adjusted … “ And then we have finally, to what: the dative singular direct object from basileia, kingdom, and with that the possessive genitive singular from the noun Qeoj, God, “the kingdom of God.”

What is the kingdom of God? It is the plan of God — X+Y+Z.

Principle

1. There is a graduation of spiritual advance in these three distracted disciples.

2. The first disciple who is distracted is shallow, emotional, superficial, and easily distracted.

3. For the first category of disciple is a pseudo intellectual whose arrogance and self-centredness is completely divorced from reality. And as you are divorced from reality distraction is easy. Those who daydream are divorced from reality. The day-dreamer is obviously a shallow person because he is easily distracted.

4. His emotional instability makes him a prior casualty to the historical crisis.

5. The second distracted disciple has advanced in doctrine so that he is already using his communication gift to preach.

6. The kingdom of God is the plan of God, the spiritual kingdom of the regenerate, and he is preaching the kingdom of God. But like so many who are preaching the kingdom of God he is a stick-in-the-mud for protocol and impressed by public opinion so that the opinion of society rules his life.

7. Conflict between his father’s funeral and following the Lord results in distraction from doctrine so that he too becomes a prior casualty, a reversionist under discipline.

8. The third distracted disciple has the shaky priorities. He is confused about love and cannot interpret history in the light of the Word of God. He is described in Luke 9:61-62 which reads as follows: “Now another disciple also said, Lord, I will follow you; but first give me permission to say goodbye to those in my family. Now, Jesus replied face to face with him, No one, after having put his hand on the plough, and looking toward the things behind, is well-adjusted to the kingdom of God.”

Matthew 8:23, Those who were qualified, those who matriculated for the course: “And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him”.

We begin with the connective use of the conjunction kai which emphasises a noteworthy fact, and is translated “nevertheless.” This is an unusual use of the conjunction kai and it indicates that while many categories of believers fail in normal times there are those who take the course in normal times so they are prepared for abnormal times. The same course is now open to us. In spite of the fact that many believers are dropouts and do not matriculate for the course there are those who advance and are always ready in times of crisis. This is the crisis personality, a mature believer who is on the verge of reaching maturity and will continue with positive volition. The believer who is positive toward doctrine and has his momentum up and is approaching maturity or is already a spiritually mature believer, is always oriented to reality, whether it is reality in normal times or reality in abnormal times. He is oriented to reality because his happiness does not depend upon the circumstances of life.

Now this, of course, is the issue: the ability to orient to your circumstances. This is what is really important in life. Orientation to reality always uses the maximum indwelling Bible doctrine. The crisis personality is a mature or a strong believer who is always inflexible regarding the essentials but very flexible regarding nonessentials. And it is often that last part that is so important in disaster, flexibility regarding nonessentials, and is often the difference between surviving and not surviving in a disaster situation. Add to that all the doctrine that you have in your soul all comes through concentration. You concentrate and concentrate and take it into the left lobe as gnwsij and transfer it into the right lobe as e)pignwsij. And that concentration is not a one-way system. The same system of concentration causes you to apply doctrine to the situation. You cannot survive historical disaster unless you have the ability to think in historical disaster, and not only to think but to come up with the right principle and the right application. So the very system by which you learn is the same system by which you apply what you have learned. It is concentration in times of disaster.

These people who board the ship have put doctrine first; they have remembered the Source; they are occupied with the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the crisis personality combines inflexibility regarding the essentials with flexibility regarding nonessentials. Add to that concentration and the ability to think. The crisis personality therefore can cope with any disaster in life, whether it is a personal one or historical. He does not follow any set pattern or is he moulded to some overt system which he must follow and from which he cannot depart. The crisis personality can do the right thing because he is flexible, he is concentrating, he is thinking. The disaster is not freezing his thought content, it is stimulating his thinking. He concentrates in disaster on what is important, the essentials, the inner residence of Bible doctrine. So the historical or crisis personality gives the strong or mature believer the opportunity to apply doctrine to reality and to therefore demonstrate the power of doctrine in life. The imputation of divine blessing to the mature blessing to the mature believer always includes undeserved suffering which is, in effect, a course, a preparation for historical disaster.

We have the word “nevertheless.” Nevertheless there were those who matriculated for the course, they registered for the course in disaster dynamics. This is followed by the aorist active participle of the verb e)mbainw, to embark. The aorist tense is a constative aorist and it refers to the fact that each person made a decision, and then his decision led to action, and he now finds himself in the course. All of that is gathered up into one entirety by the constative aorist. Jesus produces the action of the verb first and, of course, the positive disciples will follow. With this we have a prepositional phrase e)ij plus the accusative singular of ploion, a ship, not a boat.

“his disciples” — the nominative plural subject maqhthj, and this time maqhthj refers to those who are positive believers. With this we have the genitive of relationship from the intensive pronoun a)utoj, and is used for the personal pronoun, third person, “his students,” “his disciples.”

Note:

1. These disciples or students represent believers who are persistent, who keep plugging and therefore are stable in the perception of doctrine. Nothing distracts them. [Note that the disciples we have studied are all distracted by legitimate things, not sinful things. Sin is not the issue in this passage].

2. They are therefore unremitting in their perseverance where doctrine is concerned. Nothing will replace doctrine and therefore they never lose the continuity of our Lord’s teaching, which is analogous today to the continuity of Bible teaching. Continuity is everything.

3. These who board the ship are motivated to exploit the opportunity to learn doctrine and they are grateful to the Lord for the opportunity afforded by logistical grace. They are persistent and will go anywhere without being distracted; they will follow the Lord to learn doctrine.

4. Therefore, these who board the ship must be described as mentally indefatigable. They are persistent no matter what the subject happens to be.

5. These disciples follow our Lord into the ship, not knowing where they are going. As a matter of fact it doesn’t make any difference. They are not looking at their future or thinking of their future in terms of advancement, they are looking at their immediate situation one day at a time, and that is to stay up with the Lord; where He goes, they go. In that sense they demonstrate persistence in positive volition.

6. Even systems of human security (which are legitimate) have been set aside in the priority battle of life. There is always something that is more important in life TO YOU PERSONALLY, and that is the issue in the priority battle. It is that something that either makes or breaks you as a believer. For if that something is doctrine then it is inevitable that you would have left the crowd and embarked on the ship with our Lord. But if there is something more important in life than doctrine it is also inevitable that the virtuous, the good, the wonderful, the pure, the honourable, can be just as distracting as anything sinful or anything evil.

7. The ship itself represents Bible doctrine inculcated. [Perception is not enough. Perception means some concentration and some perspicacity. But inculcation means authority, transferring it from the left lobe to the right lobe.]

8. In the ship with Christ is the only safe place to be in life. For us, since Christ is not on the earth, maximum doctrine resident in the soul is the only safety in life. It creates that great ring of fire that surrounds us and protects us from both unseen as well as visible danger. In the ship with Christ is the only place to face the storms of life, whether they are personal or historical.

Next comes our verb, the aorist active indicative of a)kolouthew, to follow. Now, two categories of disciples who failed said: “I will follow you.” Dedication! sincerity! emotion! The ones who spoke their good intentions did not carry out their good intentions, which goes to prove a point: giving these public dedications is absolutely useless and meaningless.

The people who followed Jesus on to the ship did what the dropouts said they would do but never did. The dropouts were all talk! But those who had Bible doctrine, those who were pluggers, those who persevered in the intake of doctrine, they were really the doers, not the ones who talked about it.

If you do anything in the Christian life the important thing is to do it from your own freewill, motivated by doctrine in your soul, not motivated by someone else inspiring you. If someone else has to inspire you, you are a weak sister, you are using a crutch. People must be motivated in the soul to succeed in disaster when the pressure is on.

The constative aorist gathers into one entirety the action of the positive believer. The active voice, the positive believers produce the action of the verb and the indicative mood is declarative, it represents the action from the viewpoint of reality.

We have one more word in this particular verse: the dative singular, indirect object from that intensive pronoun a)utoj, used again as a third person singular personal pronoun, “him.”

“Nevertheless when he boarded the ship his disciples followed him.”

Principle

1. Before the believer can face the storms of life he must enter the ship. Before you can matriculate in the course for disaster dynamics you must have doctrine — and you must be persistent and consistent in the intake of doctrine.

2. No storm or testing becomes a blessing until the believer enters the ship [follows the Lord]. Following the Lord is perception of doctrine; entering the ship is perception of doctrine.

3. The ship, therefore, is analogous to Bible teaching. And there are several ways in which this follows: first of all the ship was isolated. All Bible teaching is accomplished in isolation from the mob and from the normal functions of life. That is why we have a church; that is why the early church met in homes or away from the mob in catacombs or caves. Those who are learning doctrine must be separated to learn. The ship is on the water and is therefore isolated from the normal functions of life.

4. When the believer enters the classroom of the local church he is isolated from life’s modus operandi.

5. Therefore, a classroom eliminates distraction so that concentration of doctrine will result in the perception of doctrine. And the same concentration will reverse it self for application of doctrine. 6. Once the believer gains that momentum from the consistent perception of doctrine [the hand on the plough analogy] he can face any storm or any disaster of life. But no storm, no disaster, becomes a test until the believer from his own freewill boards the ship and takes in doctrine. Adversity is never a test until you have some doctrine in your soul; adversity is never a blessing without doctrine in your soul.

The second paragraph of Matthew chapter eight: the curriculum for disaster dynamics — verses 24 — 27. Class has begun, the ship has embarked from Capernaum, it is crossing the Sea of Tiberius.

“And there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with waves: but he was asleep.”

We begin again with the connective use of the conjunction kai — this time it introduces a result which comes from what precedes. They have embarked, they have matriculated for the course. We translate it “And so,” Next we have a demonstrative particle, i)dou. That particular form is the aorist middle imperative from o(raw, except that it is accented as a particle rather than an aorist middle imperative. And so we will translate it, “And so, look what happened.” That is exactly what it means.

Next comes the nominative singular subject, seismoj, the Greek word for shaking, but actually it meant a storm of any kind, not an earthquake. Furthermore, we have an adjective with us, megaj which indicates a force twelve storm. Then the aorist middle indicative from ginomai which, this time, means originated, “a great storm originated.” Now, ginomai means that first of all the sea was so calm that it was like glass, and almost instantaneously the storm hit. The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety, used here for an action extended over a period of time. “And so look what happened, a great storm originated.”

The place, of course, e)n plus the locative singular of qalassa, a sea or a lake. This storm is the course. This is a deliberately produced terrible storm. The storm was the crisis, the course. Those who were positive and came aboard were those who had enough doctrine to persist in perception of doctrine. Now comes the test. Can you use it? You concentrated in learning. Can you reverse concentrate under great disaster conditions and use it?

The preparation for this course is quite obvious, perception in doctrinal teaching. The storm is designated by God to teach the futility of human resources of any kind in disaster. No energy of the flesh function, no talent, no ability, no power and no authority will provide safety or security. Furthermore, in a time of great crisis and disaster no nation is safe, no island is safe, no place of isolation, no powerful nation, is actually secure or safe in time of disaster. Therefore, the obvious part of the curriculum is that the only thing that is safe is the inner resources of Bible doctrine. Only the disciples who were positive to doctrine faced the storm. Because the negative believers had already been eliminated for various reasons and various excuses, all legitimate, they had refused to embark. In the storm positive believers learned who and what Christ is, they learned the importance of doctrine, and therefore the storms of life are designed to teach a higher form of security than anything we have ever known before, a security which is related to the manifest person of the Godhead, the Lord Jesus Christ. The sea, of course, is like the circumstances of life, it is variable. One moment it is very calm and very beautiful, representing the pleasant circumstances of life, usually associated with happiness, the next moment the sea becomes stormy and awesome in its fury. It represents therefore the disasters and the crises of life.

The ship itself represents maximum doctrine resident in the soul, or enough doctrinal resources to take the course, which doesn’t always mean a mature believer but it does mean a believer who has long ago passed the point of ignorance of doctrine. With maximum doctrine resident in the soul the believer is above the circumstances of life; that is, he is not a slave to them. A storm doesn’t frighten him, it doesn’t take away his happiness, it doesn’t take away his occupation with the Person of Jesus Christ. Circumstances are never the basis for blessing or happiness in life, only doctrine resident in the soul. And this is the major point which is taught in the crisis of the storm.

Principle

1. The adverse circumstances of life are like the stormy sea; they provide uncertainty and lack of human control. In effect, a disaster is a circumstance which is beyond your ability to control.

2. The ship is the only place of safety in the storm, just as Bible doctrine resident in the soul is the only security for the storms of life.

3. Bible doctrine resident in the soul is the basis for capacity for happiness and blessing. That same doctrine resident in the soul is the basis for blessing and confidence in adversity.

4. Many believers never get into the ship because they are distracted from doctrine by legitimate things. But those who do face the storm, face it not as a discipline but as a blessing in this course.

5. The only place of safety and security in the storm is the ship of Bible doctrine, God’s Word resident in the soul through many sessions of Bible teaching.

6. No matter how intense the storm, no matter how great the crisis or the disaster, the ship is stabilised and safe for the ship is doctrine in the soul which cannot be destroyed.

7. Suffering for blessing is one of the categories of imputed blessing from the justice of God. And it is, of course, designed for the mature believer, though there is always one test prior to maturity.

8. This means that suffering is intimately linked to blessing in the divine imputation from the justice of God to the righteousness of God.

9. You cannot have blessing from suffering unless the disaster is real.

Verse 24b, “ … insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves.”

Principle

1. God does not deliver believers by cancelling the crisis. He delivers through the intensification of the crisis. The storm intensified. It started out as a great storm but now waves are going over the bridge.

2. The blessing comes not from stopping the storm instantly but from riding out the storm.

3. The mature believer who has the inner resources of Bible doctrine is delivered in the storm, not from the storm.

4. The real blessing is in the storm so that storm reality must be intensified with the result that all of those in the ship have a full and a total realisation of disaster circumstances.

The conjunction which begins with “insomuch” is actually the Greek particle w(ste. It introduces a result dependant clause following the indicative and should be translated, “so that,” “with the result that.” Next comes the nominative singular subject ploion with the definite article used to denote a previous reference, it is the same ship on which they embarked, “so that the ship.” This is followed by a present passive infinitive from the verb kaluptw, to hide, to obscure, to cover, to conceal, “so that the ship was covered.” Next comes our prepositional phrase u(po plus the ablative of kuma, waves.

“And so, look what happened, a great storm originated on the sea, so that the ship was covered by waves.”

Principle

1. When the disciples embarked with our Lord the sea was calm. It gave no indication of the storm to come. And in this way it is analogous to the fact that today we have enough prosperity that to most people in this country the “sea” is calm. (There is enough assurance from politicians and dreamers that everything is going to be all right.)

2. So it is, of course, with crisis and disaster — you always have a calm before the storm. This is because people are stupid; politicians are worse than stupid. (I do not mean dumb or low IQ, but rather, stupid in the sense of arrogance). Arrogance is divorced from reality and therefore always looking on the bright side when the roof is about to fall in!

3. During the calm before the storm the only preparation which exists is in the soul — the thought pattern of the individual —, where there is something of value that you can have in this life and take with you into eternity — that is, the thought content of the soul. The doctrine you learn is more valuable than all the gold, money, power, authority, or anything the world has ever known. Bible doctrine in your soul is the most valuable commodity in life.

4. Therefore, preparation for disaster (and it is coming in our lifetime) demands doctrine resident in the soul. This is the dynamics for disaster. The storm is real, the danger is real.

5. Just as the storm came suddenly without warning, so great disaster comes suddenly without warning. Only a seaman would know that when things are so calm on the sea something is wrong. And some of you through doctrine have your “barometer” attuned to history and you are aware of how desperate and terrible things are in our country. The disaster is going to come.

6. The warning would have been useless once they had embarked. This illustrates the fact that we do not need warning for disaster, only doctrine, more doctrine, and more doctrine. What the disciples needed was to ride out the storm with the use of doctrine resident in the soul. It should have been fun!

There are many preparations for disaster and many plans which are destroyed in a crisis. People often prepare for disaster but their preparations are swept away. They prepare by accumulating something that is wealth for a time of disaster; they prepare by isolating themselves from society in a place they have secured with provisions to ride out the storm. These, too, are swept away. The only real help in times of a storm is what you have in your soul. That is what counts. And God uses prepared people, this is what the disciples will learn from this storm. Prepared people are inculcated with doctrine. No human preparation can avoid catastrophe in time of disaster; it is divine faithfulness and divine deliverance that counts.

The next phrase: “but he was asleep.” The post positive conjunctive particle de emphasises a contrast between the disciples who are wide awake and becoming disturbed, and from being disturbed they will be frightened, and from being frightened they will become desperate. So the little word “but” indicates the contrast between the growing concern, the desperation, the panic of the disciples, and our Lord’s obvious relaxed condition.

The nominative singular subject is the intensive pronoun a)utoj, used many times as a personal pronoun, third person. There is no third person personal pronoun in the Greek. There is e)gw for the first person, there is su for the second person, and a)utoj, the intensive pronoun, is used for the personal pronoun. And it is correctly translated, “h(.”

Then we have the imperfect active indicative from the verb kaqeudw, to be asleep. But He continued sleeping, the storm did not awaken Him. The imperfect tense is linear aktionsart in past time, which means that the fury of the storm, the roll of the ship, the pitch, etc. did not awaken the Lord. The active voice, Jesus Christ produced the action of the verb which was a perfect demonstration of a relaxed mental attitude. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of the fact that our Lord did not awaken in the storm.

Principle

1. While the storm raged on the sea the Lord Jesus Christ is sound asleep on the ship.

2. Actually, only His humanity is sleeping, the deity of Christ never sleeps. Christ as God cannot sleep, does not sleep.

3. The question arises, of course: Why didn’t the humanity of Christ awaken and utter assurances to the disciples?

4. They had all they needed by way of assurance in this great storm. They had doctrine resident in the soul, they did not need the Lord to stand up and tell them everything would be all right. They did not need personal attention in time of crisis. The Lord had taught them in a group Bible doctrine; they did not need the Lord to now tell each one personally it was all right. All they needed for Him to do was to sleep because His work was over, He had done His job. He had taught them doctrine.

No one else can think for you in a crisis, you have to think for yourself. You have to think doctrine, you have to concentrate.

Notice that the Lord Jesus Christ was not going to be their crutch. You are a weak sister when you have to run to someone else and constantly get help. They had doctrine resident in the soul, they did not need personal attention.

5. Whether awake or asleep the status quo depends, not on our Lord’s being awake or asleep, but on the doctrine each disciple has in his soul. He must possess it himself.

6. The disciples all understood the doctrine of the hypostatic union. Therefore, the deity of Christ was totally cognisant of the situation, not only at that moment currently, but billions of years ago the omniscience of the Lord Jesus Christ had known as actuality that storm on the sea and had fed into the computer of divine decrees the proper information, so that the printout was a course in disaster dynamics. He knew in eternity past that this would occur and had already provided everything necessary. The disciples knew that, so it was a matter of application.

7. It is doctrine you learn, doctrine you understand, that makes you spiritually self-sustaining so that you depend on the inner resources of doctrine in catastrophe rather than encouragement, attention, or counselling from someone else.

8. Therefore, part of the course is the fact that our Lord is sleeping. Our Lord sleeps so that the disciples will not become spiritual cripples. They do not need the Lord for a crutch. What they need is Bible doctrine He has previously taught them.

In other words, when you get into a major disaster that isn’t the time to learn the whole realm of doctrine. You can’t play tapes all day when you get into a disaster!

9. No matter how strong the wind, no matter how high or how heavy the seas, no matter how the ship rolls, with Jesus Christ aboard they are perfectly safe.

10. The application to us should be obvious assurance. Jesus Christ controls history.

11. By sleeping in the storm our Lord teaches the importance of inner resources of doctrine. He is actually doing them a favour by remaining asleep.

12. Even in basics they would learn faith-rest, and they’ve had their basics. In the same context the Roman officer came all of the way from his post to Capernaum and there had the faith-rest technique so indoctrinated that when he asked to have his son healed, and the Lord said, I will go with you,” he said, “No, I am a man under authority and I understand your authority. I know that you can stand right here and demand my son be healed and he will be healed.” And our Lord said: “I have not found so great a faith in all of Israel.” The centurion’s son was healed that same hour. “As thou hast believed, so be it unto thee” .So the disciples already had the basics in faith-rest.

13. The disciples followed Christ into the ship but they did not follow Him in the ship by relaxing in time of storm.

Principle

1. With the Lord Jesus Christ aboard it is impossible for the ship to sink.

2. No storm of life is greater than the power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

3. We have to conclude that when the sailors are scared it is an awesome storm.

4. The failure or panic occurs in the next verse because the disciples had their eyes on the storm rather than their eyes on the Lord. One of the simplest of all principles for disaster: if you have your eyes on the disaster you will fail; if you are occupied with Christ you will make it. But occupation with Christ demands prior Bible indoctrination — day in and day out.

5. Testing through catastrophe and disaster always brings out what a person really is and what he has. If what he has is doctrine he really is a hero in time of catastrophe.

6. No one becomes strong in the storm, he becomes strong before the storm. The storm merely brings out your strength, your courage. You have these things before the storm; the storm merely brings out what you have.

7. The disciples had doctrine but they didn’t use it. Reason: the doctrine they had down was not nailed down through concentration. It was picked up through interest perspicacity — i.e. you listen carefully when the subject interests you but if the subject seems dull and about things you don’t care about, then you don’t listen. So the result is that when you put it together in your soul you only have things that interest you, not things you need. Therefore, you are not prepared. Without concentration regarding all subjects of doctrine you do not have concentration for application of any subjects of doctrine in catastrophe.

8. However, they will learn because this is a course for dynamics in disaster. They will learn from this pressure test of the storm that doctrine must be applied in disaster, just as doctrine is applied in normal circumstances of life — that regardless of circumstances you must always be applying doctrine.

9. Courage and strength are not developed in disaster, they are developed before disaster. Courage and strength are something you carry with you into the storm. There is no way that you can muster instant courage. Emotion will not carry in a real disaster.

Verse 25 — How to fail the course, or panic under pressure! First of all we have a connective kai introducing a result from what precedes, translated “consequently.” Then we have the subject, o(i maqhtai a)utou which, however, is not found in the original. The correct translation is simply, “Consequently they approached” or “they came,” the aorist active participle of proserxomai, to come to or to approach. The constative aorist was for instantaneous action. They panicked and all ran to Him. [All panic comes from emotion. They are not thinking because they are emotional.]

Then we have the aorist active indicative of e)geirw, a verb used in tow ways: for resurrection and for waking someone up. “they wakened him.”

“Consequently having approached they roused him.”

Principle

1. Human panic always assumes that the Lord is sleeping or not paying attention to YOU in disaster. People are so arrogant and so full of self-pity and so emotional that they fail to come up with the simplest application of doctrine. Not only is the Lord paying attention to you but the Lord knew about your personal problems, the catastrophes of history which you encounter, billions of years ago. But just as soon as some disaster hits the Lord has forgotten us! Therefore, we must wake Him up! We must do something so that God will stop this terrible thing! That is how idiotic people are.

2. Human panic is also the source of pseudo prayer — praying when you shouldn’t be, praying a false prayer — fear, worry, anxiety, and perhaps even guilt complex.

3. People seem to attribute their helplessness in a catastrophe to their past failures or sins, and because they are arrogant they immediately assume that God is punishing them for something that happened in the past. They forget that God keeps short accounts; they forget that the disciples that God punished didn’t even get aboard the ship. This is not divine discipline.

4. You cannot receive the blessing of undeserved suffering while harbouring a guilt complex.

5. Rebound is designed to remove the guilt complex, which is not only a sin but an emotional aberration.

6. Obviously the disciples are not waiting on the Lord, or waiting for His will, or enjoying the storm, or beginning to note the obvious — the ship is going to ride out the storm.

7. Like most believers they are running far ahead or else lagging far behind. In this case emotion moves them way ahead, they see themselves drowning in the sea.

8. It never occurred to the disciples to ride out the storm and see what the Lord had for them.

9. Remember again that the humanity of Christ was sleeping, not His deity. They were perfectly safe; the Lord knew billions of years ago in eternity past their circumstances at this moment and had already made provision for them to ride out the storm. They had forgotten the most basic principle in life: God has a purpose for your life and as long as that purpose continues you will ride out every storm. And only when He sees fit to take you home does His purpose for your life cease. Until then He still has a purpose for your life.

10. It was totally unnecessary to wake up the Lord. They could have claimed very simply, Deuteronomy 33:27 — “The eternal God [Jesus Christ] is our refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

11. Or this was the time to apply doctrine. The application did not call for panic and it did not call for waking up the Lord. With the Lord Jesus Christ in the ship the vessel is stabilised in the storm though it continues to roll and corkscrew in the giant waves.

“they woke him up, saying,” — the present active participle (is strong linear aktionsart) of legw. They said it again and again and again. And they used the vocative, kurioj, “Lord,” and they used the very word they didn’t seem to understand. It means deity. They are saying “God,” deity, and yet they are not applying the deity of Christ to the situation. Which all goes to prove that a believer who flunks a disaster test is the most mixed-up person who could possibly live.

So the vocative is used for the deity of Christ and the believer who fails to apply doctrine to experience or fails to use the faith-rest technique in time of disaster is always inconsistent, irrational, incapable of clear thinking. They called Jesus Lord but they are afraid. Jesus as Lord is God; as God He has delivered them in eternity past and they should be enjoying the storm. This vocative is a reminder that the believer must concentrate, he must think doctrine in time, think rationally under pressure, in order to be great in time of disaster.

“Save” — the aorist active imperative of swzw and it means here rescue us. We might ask, from what? You are still alive, still aboard ship.

Verse 25 — They used the vocative kurioj, “Lord,” in which they understood that Jesus Christ is God, and since they could observe Him sleeping they obviously understood the hypostatic union. Only His humanity was sleeping, deity never sleeps, the omniscience of His deity knew billions of years ago that this situation would exist. They knew doctrine but they could not apply it; they had ability to take it one way but not put it back through the same concentration. For the real secret is always the same, it is the principle of concentration. You never learn doctrine by sitting in church, you learn doctrine by concentrating in church. And the concentrator takes the doctrine in and converts it from gnosis to e)pignwsij so that in time of pressure that same concentrator applies it out.

“Save us” — the aorist active imperative of swzw, to deliver. The disciples recognised their own helplessness in the storm and begged the Lord to produce the action of the verb instead of waiting for the Lord to produce the action of the verb. But what they do not understand is that they have been prepared for one year for this storm for resident in their souls is the preparation; they have learned the necessary doctrine. This storm would never have occurred were it not for the fact that they were already prepared for it. You never prepare for disaster in disaster, you always prepare for disaster long before the disaster occurs. Normal times are designed for such preparation so that in abnormal times you can have the same happiness, the same blessing, the same stability, the same principle of being spiritually self-sustaining. It is doctrine resident in the soul which this time is reversed and the concentration in disaster is moving in the direction of the disaster so that you can apply whatever is necessary at the right time. And by virtue of the fact that they were saying, “Lord, save us,” indicates that they had one half a lesson. One half that they understood was their helplessness but the other half of the lesson is from doctrine resident in their soul. They do not need to wake up the Lord. The very fact that the Lord is sleeping tells them the whole story. They do not need His counsel, they do not need words of encouragement, they have all of the resources as inner resources of Bible doctrine. They do not need anything from the Lord at this time; He doesn’t have to counsel them, that would make them weak and would mean that they were using the Lord for a crutch instead of their source of doctrine.

The imperative of entreaty, then, indicates the fear and the panic of the disciples, for a half lesson is no lesson. To recognise your own helplessness also means that you must flip over the coin and recognise the strength of the Lord, the ability of the Lord, the greatness of the Lord, and the whole principle of the plan of God that as long as you are alive God has a purpose for your life and all of the storms in the world cannot possibly destroy or remove you from this life. There was a purpose, this was the lesson; the storm was the lesson; the storm was designed to teach them the importance of using the most valuable thing in the world — Bible doctrine resident in the soul. Jesus Christ asleep or awake on board that ship is the stabiliser and no storm and no disaster can destroy the ship. Security plus capacity for life means that the disciples in the ship should have been enjoying the storm.

Then they added something that was not true, the present passive indicative of the verb a)pollumi, which means to be destroyed, to be lost, to be ruined, to be perishing, to be dying. They are not dying. No ship was ever safer than the one in which our Lord was sleeping. No matter how great the storm the One who is sleeping in that ship is greater than all the storms of history. By lack of the faith-rest technique the disciples are being destroyed spiritually by the waves but not physically. Spiritually they are full of fear and when you are frightened you cannot concentrate, when you are full of anxiety you cannot concentrate, when you are distracted by other people you cannot concentrate.

The verse then says: “Consequently, having gone to him, they woke him up screaming, Save us, Lord; we are being wrecked.”

Principle

1. The course in disaster dynamics requires the inculcation and application of Bible doctrine to a real catastrophe. The catastrophe has to be real, it has to be dangerous.

2. The requirement is the modus operandi of the faith-rest technique. For mature believers not verses but doctrines must be applied. For the immature, Grab a verse!

3. For those, then, who lack doctrine certain promises would be pertinent. (Note: A change of circumstance in your life is never designed to make you miserable. Any change in your life for the worse is not designed for your misery, it is designed for your blessing, it is designed for your happiness. It is designed to demonstrate to all those around you how Bible doctrine is the stabiliser in life).

The disciples were miserable because they thought they were going to die. They were miserable because they were occupied with the circumstances of life rather than the One who had provided the circumstances, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Principle

1. Disaster always has a divine purpose. There never was a time when disaster did not have a purpose.

2. The purpose may be discipline or it may be blessing but even if it is discipline it is blessing. (Let’s get this spanking over with and get to something else!) At least you know that when the Lord is disciplining you He is keeping track of you; He loves you. And, of course, if you have rebounded then the cursing is turned into blessing, right in the middle of the disaster. You will never have suffering in your life for which God does not have some purpose. And if you have kept up your doctrine on a daily basis then you will understand that purpose, find profit from the purpose, and find happiness in disaster.

For the positive believer the divine design in disaster is blessing and that is why the Lord was sound asleep. What is disaster to us is nothing to the Lord. And if it is nothing to Him that means that He controls the disaster whether He is awake or asleep.

3. The fact that Christ was sleeping was an invitation to the disciples to relax and enjoy the storm.

4. The incorrect procedure, which caused them all to flunk, is to awaken the Lord to beg for help. It meant they were not using the doctrine residing in their souls; they were not concentrating in the disaster; they were not thinking under pressure. If you cannot think under pressure you cannot handle disaster.

5. The disciples had all the help they needed resident in their souls.

6. They should have awakened in their souls and applied doctrine but instead they awakened the Lord, using Him as a crutch to apply doctrine for them. They were cowards.

7. The Lord was asleep so that they would have to use their own inner resources of doctrine — they would have to apply what they had learned.

8. This would have given them strength and practice for the next disaster and prepare them for blessing in adversity.

9. Being fishermen and sailors they had the opportunity of living through one of the greatest storms in history and surviving without any water in their lungs. In fact the storm was not designed to make them corpses but to give them the feel of disaster and how important it is to think.

10. The believer with doctrine in his soul may be helpless in disaster but never hopeless.

11. Confidence and security from doctrine resident in the soul is capacity for life, happiness in time of disaster.

12. They should have applied doctrine and claimed promises so that when the storm was over they could wake up the Lord and thank Him for the doctrine they had learned, and how they had finally discovered something; doctrine in the soul can be applied, you can think in a storm instead of panic in a storm. However, the disciples all flunked because they woke Him up before the storm was over.

Proverbs 23:7 tells us that the real “you” is what you think. You are what you think as an individual with capacity for thought as well as the possession of a soul.

We have already noted that fear is lack of concentration in a crisis. The disciples panicked in the storm while our Lord kept on sleeping. We have seen the significance of His action; only His humanity was sleeping, His deity had known of this problem billions of years ago and had made provision for it. Actually the disciples were perfectly safe; this was their opportunity to use the system of concentration by which they had come to perception of doctrine. They failed to do this; they wanted to lean upon our Lord, demonstrating their own weakness. They already had the mind of Christ in the form of Bible doctrine and had enough information to apply to the catastrophe; yet they failed to concentrate and to think in the time of disaster.

Verse 26 — the post-mortem, a double reprimand.

“And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” This is first of all a reprimand to the disciples. It will be followed by a reprimand to the sea.

Our first word in the Greek is the connective use of the conjunction kai which introduces a result. And we translate a result from what precedes as “And so.” Next we have the communication of our Lord, “and he said.” The historical present tense views the present tense with the vividness of a present occurrence. Just as our Lord spoke to the disciples some two thousand years ago he speaks to us today. The active voice, the awakened Jesus Christ produces the action of the verb. He should have continued sleeping for they needed not to depend on someone else, they needed to get away from counselling, they needed to use their own inner resources of doctrine.

With this we have the dative plural, indirect object from the intensive pronoun autoj, correctly translated “to them.” “And he said to them,” the lesson is for those aboard ship. Those who have failed are not even going to learn the lesson. [Here the lesson is to be learned, not by passing the course but, by failing the course] Their failure is the basis for teaching them the great lessons of dynamics in disaster.

With this we have a nominative neuter singular from the interrogative pronoun tij which introduces the question from which they are to learn. Then we have the present active indicative from the verb e)imi, the verb to be; “Why are you?” The progressive present signifies action in a state of persistence, in this case erroneous action. They have done the wrong thing and they are going to learn from their failure. The active voice: the disciples in the ship, apparently to a man, produce the action of the verb. The interrogative indicative is used for the viewpoint of reality implied; “fearful,” cowards. The predicate nominative plural from the word deiloj. And it is not the fact that these men were physical cowards. That is not really the point at all. For cowardice is not an issue with regard to things that you normally would not fear. Many people have an area of strength and many people have an area of weakness. There is something that everyone fears in life and there are many things in life which cause no fear at all. But that is not the meaning here. A coward is defined as a person who cannot think in time of disaster. “Consequently he said to them, Why are you cowards?” This is the question which begins the course in disaster dynamics.

Principle

1. You will note that the Lord reprimands the disciples in the ship, not the disciples who failed and did not board the ship. Many of the disciples had failed and were dropouts but this is a course for those who are positive toward doctrine and those who had learned enough doctrine to pass the test. The failure will be the basis for teaching the lesson. You will also notice that the disciples were reprimanded before the sea was rebuked. The sea is calm after the course is over and not before.

2. By doing this the Lord establishes the priorities of this situation. What is more important, calming the sea or clarifying the issue to believers? Obviously clarifying the issue to believers. The soul of the believer and the lesson to be learned is far more important than removing the historical disaster.

3. The order of events, then: first the disciples are censured and then Christ expunges the storm.

4. There is an analogy in the fact that the disciples are out of hand, matching the fury of the storm — which is also out of hand.

5. It will take a long time to bring the disciples into control because their recovery demands daily positive volition over a long period of time, the concentration in learning the doctrine so that the next time applying it under pressure will be there.

6. But the storm, on the other hand, will be instantly controlled because the storm is a part of the material universe and it responds instantly to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the creator.

7. For the Lord, dealing with the storm is simple. But with the disciples it will require a day by day recognition of our Lord’s authority and responding to it by the perception of Bible doctrine.

8. In other words, the disciples must learn and relearn doctrine so that the application in the future will be instantaneous — the instant reflex of the right lobe filled with Bible doctrine.

9. Cowardice and fear destroys the power of thinking and reasoning in a crisis. It is absolutely essential that the believers think in the crisis for thinking is the only means of applying doctrine. Applying doctrine means thinking doctrine.

“Consequently he said to them, Why are you cowards?”

Principle

1. First of all we should note that cowards never enjoy anything. All cowards are arrogant. Arrogance is a part of cowardice, an overestimation of one’s own value in any situation. Therefore, arrogant people always have hang-ups, they always have to prove something.

2. Rarely does a man have the opportunity of enjoying a force twelve storm. The disciples were fishermen and should have been exhilarated by the storm. They should have been looking at the sleeping Christ and know that they were perfectly safe. The fact that He was asleep should have reminded them of the hypostatic union and its application.

3. Whether awake or asleep Jesus Christ was aboard and that meant perfect safety.

4. A storm at sea is an awesome spectacle. It should have been one of the great moments of the disciples’ life, provided of course that they understood that they were perfectly safe, and provided they applied doctrine. But you must always remember the principle: fear always wipes out capacity for life. Circumstances should not change one’s attitude where doctrine is applied. Remember, it is the persistence in the perception of doctrine, it is daily concentration, that gives you reverse concentration in adversity. In other words, when you have to concentrate every day on the teaching of the Word it is the habit of concentration in normal times that leads to the concentration in abnormal times.

Principle

1. Fear in the storm is not lack of doctrine; fear in the storm is failure to apply doctrine.

2. Some people have doctrine but have not learned to apply that doctrine. So God provides storms in life, storms to teach the believer to apply doctrine in the same way that he learned doctrine [concentration, thinking, thinking].

3. The crises of life prepare for the disasters of life. But facing a personal crisis is no good unless you have doctrine with which to face it. So the secret to disaster is consistent academic concentration on those subjects which are applicable to disaster. God provides the charge of the mosquito to prepare you for the charge of the elephant. But you do not face the charge of the mosquito until you understand some doctrine.

4. Undeserved suffering is simply practice for historical catastrophe.

5. We must learn to shoot on the range before we enter combat to shoot at the enemy.

6. We must learn from the crisis to apply doctrine before we apply doctrine to the disaster.

7. Cowardice or fear automatically shuts down any application of doctrine resident in the soul. Cowardice or fear is switching to emotion instead of thought.

8. The believer cannot think when he is frightened. Therefore, he cannot apply doctrine when in a state of shock or fear.

9. With many of these disciples the cowardice or fear was temporary. They would learn the great lesson from their failure. In other words, once a coward always a coward is not true. Cowardice is lack of thinking in the crisis. One must cultivate the art of thinking in the crisis and having done so cowardice has gone.

In verse 26 we have a vocative in the King James version: “O ye of little faith?” Actually it is only one word in the Greek, o)ligopistoi. That form is a vocative plural. It is a compound word: o)ligoj, small, little, short; pistij not only means faith but also means doctrine. It does not mean short of doctrine here though because these disciples have enough doctrine to pass the course. So they are not short on doctrine, but they are short on something.

Notice here that our Lord did not call them faithless, a)pistia, unfaithful. These are positive believers and are the ones who boarded the ship. He also could have called them a)pistoj which would have meant, in effect, that they had missed Bible class now and again. But they haven’t .But He did call them o)ligopistoi. What does this mean? The adjective o)ligoj connotes qualitative concepts and could be translated “few.” It also has a quantitative connotation whereby it means “small,” “little” or “short.” This adjective also has the connotation of duration, short duration, short time. And that is exactly the way we should translate it “short time trusters.”

“Consequently he said to them, Why are you cowards, you short time trusters.” What does it mean to be a short time truster?

Remember that these were believers with a lot of doctrine; these were believers who were brought out to take the test. Which means that they had the doctrine to pass the test, which they didn’t .Why? They were short time trusters.

What is a short time truster?

1. As long as things are pleasant and relatively quiet certain believers are experts at applying doctrine.

2. But as soon as there is a crisis or a disaster they simply cannot apply what they have learned. Why? Because they have picked up doctrine by being quick but not by concentrating. And they listen when they feel like it instead of concentrating perpetually, persistently. This is the great issue. You have to persist in Bible doctrine and they won’t do it. [If you concentrate in learning you will also concentrate in pressure]

3. Again you have to learn like the soldier who shoots well on the range but he doesn’t do well under combat conditions. Once you have pressure on him he doesn’t do well. Why? Under pressure he cannot concentrate. The believer is like the soldier who forgets his training in combat.

“Why are you cowards, you short time trusters?”

Principle

1. The vocative answers the question. The reprimand explains their status quo. They are cowards because they are short time trusters.

2. In other words, they are failures in the field of concentration, for faith-rest is a form of concentration. Trusting the Lord is a form of concentration, it is thinking, thinking, thinking, not emoting.

3. As long as there is no challenge they are content to enjoy our Lord’s messages and miracles.

4. But when the crisis approaches and disaster comes they go into shock and they cannot concentrate, there is no doctrinal thinking. Doctrinal thinking is frozen.

The disciples had doctrine but they hadn’t used it and they have failed in the principle of 2 Corinthians 5:7, “For we walk by faith and not by sight.” This means that any believer who seeks help or counsel, or uses someone else as a crutch, other than doctrine resident in his own soul, to that extent he is weak and is going backward. You will never have a test for which you have not had opportunity first to learn the pertinent doctrine. [There is no concentration in counselling; nor is there any academic discipline.] The believer who constantly seeks help and counsel from others in time of disaster never develops the ability to apply doctrine in time of pressure. Therefore, he fails in the historical crisis. So a principle emerges: doctrine is taught so that doctrine can be applied. Doctrine resident in the soul is not only the means of spiritual advance, it is designed for application to life. The believer must become spiritually self-sustaining in the storm and that requires doctrine.

“Then he arose.” All of this time He was sitting down or even lying down. Now He stands up.

We begin with the correlative adverb of time, tote, which means at that time or then. After He had reprimanded the disciples from the reclining position He comes to attention to stop the storm. This adverb of time indicates a sequence of events in the order of importance. It is far more important to admonish the disciples than to rebuke the storm. Furthermore, the storm must continue while the disciples are being reprimanded. The order emphasises the soul as the battleground of the angelic conflict. The storm is not the centre of the angelic conflict, it is the soul of every believer involved. And the issue inevitably deals with the thought content of the soul — doctrine versus human viewpoint, thought under pressure versus emotion under pressure. All human dynamics are related to thought, never to emotion. Therefore the importance of the doctrinal mental attitude.

Principle

1. The storm has no soul, it is just wind, water and temperature.

2. This was no ordinary storm, it was a real typhoon type storm.

“Then when he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea.” We have an aorist passive participle of the verb e)geirw, to raise up, to awaken, to get up, to stand up. Next, another verb, the aorist active indicative of the verb e)pitimaw, to reprimand, to reprove, to censor. “Then when he arose he reprimanded.” Again, we have the culminative aorist in which He simply gave a very short and terse command. The aorist in its culminative form can be instantaneous but it always emphasises a result. And the result, of course, is a calm sea.

We note that He reprimanded the disciples from a sitting or a reclining position. When He was awakened He did not stand up, He was either still reclining or He moved to a sitting position. But when He reprimands the sea our Lord is standing at attention. This brings up the issue of posture. The question is now: Why the change in posture?

The disciples were in a classroom. Therefore, in a teaching situation the posture of the teacher is not important. It is no issue in a teaching situation, it is the content that is important. What is being taught is the issue. However, Jesus Christ is the Lord of nature and the posture where nature is concerned is very important. Now He is the “commanding officer” and when He gives a command; instant obedience from nature.

People you teach have souls and must perceive. There must be the communication from the teacher to the individual and it must get into his soul. Posture is not issue. But He commands nature. Nature has no soul. In one case He is the “commanding officer.” In the other case He is the teacher. In both cases He has authority but the difference is that people have souls with volition and must respond from the volition. Whereas a storm has no soul at all. It is just an order to the storm.

The disciples were in a classroom where the posture of the teacher was not an issue. The storm was “on parade” where the posture of the “commanding officer” must be compatible with the situation. Therefore, He stood up to stop the storm. This means that there is a protocol for every situation. And our Lord observed not only the priorities of reprimand but the posture that relates to each category. The basic issue in teaching is not posture but the information communicated. The basic issue in stopping the storm is the authority of command.

First of all the wind must be put under control. So we have a dative plural indirect object from the noun a)nemoj. The wind must be controlled first. As long as there is a wind the sea is going to be up. Then we have a conjunction kai and then a second dative singular indirect object from qallassa, the sea. Even the order is important.

Notice: The verb implies voice usage. He use His voice, He taught (reprimanded) the disciples. He used His voice, He stopped the lesson, the pressure. The voice of our Lord Jesus Christ could be heard in the storm and the disciples heard every word. Then the storm heard His voice as He gave an order first to the wind and then to the sea. And, of course, when the Word of the Lord penetrates there is instant obedience, instant calm, no matter how great the prior turmoil And the Lord is also using this to demonstrate a lesson, not only to the disciples, but to us. Penetration of the mind of Christ in your soul replaces the turmoil of your soul with calm. No matter what the situation you can have absolute calm in your soul.

“and there was a great calm” — this is the connective use of kai to show that all of it is related to the sea and the command to the sea. Actually we have an aorist active indicative of ginomai and it should be translated “and it became.”

Principle

1. The Lord of the sea gave one command and there was instant calm.

2. This means the storm subsided immediately.

3. What appears to be a miracle was merely the Lord controlling His own creation.

4. The material universe or nature does not possess a soul with a freewill and self-determination, it is under instant obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

5. Nature recognises the authority of our Lord immediately. The force twelve storm was instantly over. The disciples needed the calm to learn the lesson. They could not learn the lesson while the gale was going full force. They needed a calm sea on which to think. They had just demonstrated they couldn’t think under pressure. Our Lord removes the pressure so they can learn the lesson.

In calming the storm our Lord also presented His credentials to the disciples so that they could learn to know that the Lord of the storm is to them the Lord in the storm. Psalm 34:19 — “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of all of them.”

1 Peter 1:7-8 — “That the proof of your faith, being much more precious than gold which perishes even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revealing of Jesus Christ:

“And though you have not seen him you love him: and though you do not see him now, but believe in him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory:”

Matthew 8:27 — “But the men marvelled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?

Here is the reason that the disciples failed. They were impressed with the wrong things. They were impressed with His power. They called it a miracle although it was just a simple use of His authority. He performed this simple use of authority in such a way that they were impressed with the fact that a force twelve storm suddenly dropped to zero. No believer can be impressed with the Lord, however, until he is impressed with His doctrine. And here is their superficiality: they were impressed with His power but not with His message. They ought to be impressed with His message and then they will understand His power. It is easy for the Lord to perform a miracle but it is difficult to reach the souls of a lot of knuckle-heads. The Lord could stop the storm, that is no problem. It is all of that vacillating, mixed up human race that is the problem. Doctrine must become a reality in the soul before the unique Person of Christ can become real to the individual believer. The disciples were impressed with the reality of the storm but not with the reality of our Lord sleeping in the storm and yet that was the key to everything. To know the Lord Jesus Christ is to love the Lord Jesus Christ but you cannot know or love the Lord Jesus Christ until doctrine can be thought, doctrine can be real in the storm. When doctrine is real in the storm the Lord is real in the storm.

So we have a post positive conjunctive particle de used here as a transitional conjunction, translated “Now.” “Now the men,” the nominative plural subject of a)nqrwpoj, i.e. the disciples aboard the ship, those who were taking the course. Because they had flunked the course in the dynamics for disaster they were now called men instead of students. They would be students again but not for now, a)nqrwpoj is used here instead of maqhthj for disciples because the believers in the ship had demonstrated lack of concentration. This is how they flunked; they were now called men instead of being called students or disciples. Instead of using doctrine in the crisis they were ordinary cowardly, stupid men. They had no concentration, no thought pattern under pressure. Therefore, the Bible calls them men instead of disciples which, for them, designates failure. Only the inculcation of doctrine resident in the soul will bring them back around.

We have now the aorist active indicative to show their immediate reaction, the aorist active indicative of the verb qaumazw, which means they were utterly astonished, they were amazed. They were so superficial that they were amazed at the calming of the storm, instead of getting the lesson they were spending all of their time admiring our Lord’s power. They were not hearing His doctrine. It is the doctrine of our Lord, not His power, that is going to carry you through because the Lord isn’t going to run around and fulfil little miracles here and there to accommodate you. He gives you doctrine resident in the soul to handle the storm.

“saying” — the present active participle of legw, they kept on saying. It was all they could talk about. They had their eyes on the Teacher and not on the message. They flunked! Therefore they had failed completely. It is the message that counts.

“that” — the conjunction o(ti used after verbs that denote an emotion. The disciples were speaking from their emotion rather than from doctrine. Not only could they not think in the storm but now they can’t even think in calm. They are so impressed with something that they are distracted from what it is all about.

Our life on earth is what we think. Doctrine gives us thought and while an assumed miracle only stimulates the emotion you cannot live on your emotions. If emotion masters your life then you will never make it for the crisis.

Verse 27 — the word for “obey” is the present active indicative of the verb u(pakouw. What is so strange about this is that since the disciples flunked the test they had forgotten that they themselves had obeyed Him in boarding ship when the weather was calm. And yet they were very superficial because they were more impressed with the miracle than with His teaching. And now they are suddenly impressed with His person because of what they think is a miracle. Actually it was not really a miracle at all, it was merely the fact that, as we have seen, the creature without a soul instantly obeys the creator. There is no volitional issue. But it is impressive to the disciples and it demonstrates that not only had they failed the test but they had lost their perspective of life completely. Also, another lesson which is extremely important: when you have a soul the greatest issue in your life is what you think. What you are in the future in disaster, which inevitably is going to come, is going to depend on what you think.

Now suddenly our Lord takes off the pressure. They had failed under the pressure of the storm. He removes the storm and, notice the result: no believer is ever the same when the sun goes down. Either you are better or worse but no believer ever stands still. Your momentum depends entirely upon Bible doctrine and nothing else. Your ability to concentrate on Bible doctrine and then to reverse the process in application. That is what counts. They no longer had the ability to see that issue.

The fact that we cannot see our Lord emphasises the fact that the only legacy we have for life in the devil’s world is the Word of God, Bible doctrine. And it is a reverse process because they saw through empiricism what they thought was a miracle. He is now at the right hand of the Father and the only way we can be impressed is through His thinking which He has left behind in the form of doctrine.

Now the present tense of u(pakouw is not linear aktionsart, it is an aoristic present, punctiliar action. The winds and the sea instantly obeyed. The active voice, the winds and the sea produce the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative, representing the verbal action in the viewpoint of absolute reality. The point is very simple. Now that they have ignored doctrine in the storm and failed to concentrate on it they still can’t concentrate on it even though it is calm. They did not apply doctrine to the storm in their situation and they do not apply doctrine now. They are minus in both cases.

Note: When you fail some personal test in your life your ability to handle normal situations is gone, at least temporarily until you recover. The disciples are now impressed with a person but they are never going to recover until they are impressed with His message.

The disciples were so occupied with what they could see that they forgot the lesson of what they could not see, the importance of doctrine. But there was one exception to that — at least one on record —, the Apostle Peter. Peter learned the lesson — eventually. Peter finally put it altogether and gives us the perfect answer to the situation. When doctrine becomes important the superficialities of life always take their proper place. They are not discarded or resented or overreacted to, but they are simply superficialities. The priorities of the inner residency of doctrine supersede all other considerations in life.

In 2 Peter 1, we have Peter making a statement at the end of his life about stability. Stability is doctrine resident in the soul, says Peter.

2 Peter 1:12 — “Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though you know them and be established in the present truth.”

The word “wherefore” is an inferential compound conjunction dio, better translated “therefore.” It is a conclusion. This is the strongest of all of the inferential conjunctions and it indicates the fact that Peter understands completely and thoroughly the lesson that so many missed when they boarded ship and moved from calm to storm and back to calm.

When Peter says there “I will not be negligent” there is no negative here. We actually have a future active indicative of mellw, to be about to be. And with it there is an adverb a)ei, an adverb of perpetuation which means “always.” So we translate: “I will always be ready.” When Peter learned something he was always ready to teach it, to repeat it again and again. The progressive future of mellw denotes the idea of progress in future time. As long as Peter has breath in his body he will never stop teaching this message, it is so important. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of the fact that he knows his subject well.

Next is an infinitive, the present active infinitive of the verb u(pomimnhskw, memory, to remind someone of something important. Peter says: “I will always be ready to keep reminding you,” a lesson that you never hear often enough. When Peter finally wrote this he had taught this lesson many, many times.

“though you know them” — he uses the conjunction kaiper, “although.” And then he adds the perfect active participle from o)ida, “although you have known them.” You already know it but that isn’t enough. You must keep on knowing it and, furthermore, you must concentrate on it. This is the only way that you will ever avoid what the disciples on the ship did by way of failure, how they flunked.

Then he adds one more thing, the perfect passive participle of sthrizw, to be stabilised. When you stop overreacting you stabilise. The only way to be stabilised is to have doctrine resident in your soul. “by means of,” e)n plus the instrumental which means “by” or by means of.” Then we have a present active participle from pareimi, but pareimi is used as an adjective. It means in this particular case “resident.” Then we have the instrumental singular of the noun a)lhqeia, doctrine.

So that the entire verse says: “Therefore I will always be ready to keep reminding all of you concerning these things, although you have known, and have become stabilised by means of resident doctrine.”

That is the issue, not simply resident doctrine but stability in resident doctrine, that is what counts. If the disciples had been stabilised they would have relaxed in the storm and they would have kept their eye on the sleeping Christ knowing everything was perfectly all right. They would have thought in the storm instead of emoting in the storm.

Verse 13 gives us the most important function in life. First of all we have that post positive conjunctive particle de used as a transitional conjunction. It means here “moreover.” Then we have the present active indicative of the verb e(geomai, which means to lead, to guide, to consider, to regard, to think. To think in terms of concentration; to think therefore in terms of application. It comes to mean “guide” because of you have thought in your soul you are guided by that thought in your soul if you can concentrate and apply that thought in your soul; that information in your soul, whatever it happens to be.

Translation: “moreover, I think” in the terms of “I consider.” This is thought, application. The word “meet” is the accusative singular of dikaioj, righteous. However, when you have the noun in the neuter gender it sometimes can be an idiom for something else and that is exactly what it is here. It doesn’t simply mean righteous but “I think it my duty,” “my responsibility.” “Moreover, I consider it my duty.”

“as long as I am in this tabernacle,” skhnwma his body. Peter is still alive. He use the word tabernacle because he recognises that his body is a tent, that it is wearing out, that his soul and his spirit which are inside of his body are going to leave his body very shortly. He will be absent from the body and face to face with the Lord but as long as he is alive and an apostle he is going to communicate the lesson he learned from the ship.

Why is he going to repeat this message? To stir them up it says. The present active infinitive of diegeirw, the same word used to wake up the Lord. E)geirw is the word used to arouse the Lord on the ship. Peter simply adds dia to it. He said, in effect, I knew a bunch of numskulls who woke up the Lord, I am going to wake you up! But I am going to intensify awakening you. They did it foolishly; you are going to learn wisdom from it; “to wake you up” is what it means. It is an iterative present, it describes what recurs at successive intervals, it is the present tense of repeated action. Wherever Peter teaches he reminds those who will listen of this message that he learned from the ship.

He adds one more thing: “by putting you in remembrance", which is wrong. It is merely another prepositional phrase, e)n plus the instrumental of u(pomnesij, to remember. Lit. “by means of a reminder.”

Corrected translation: “Moreover I consider it my duty as long as I am in this tabernacle [human body] to wake you up by means of a reminder.” We all have to be reminded constantly of the importance of Bible doctrine. Not only the importance of doctrine but concentrating on doctrine so that the means by which we assimilate doctrine is the means by which we apply doctrine — concentration.

Now Peter says in verse 14 that the reason he is writing this down is that he is about to die. And this is the greatest lesson he has ever learned, a lesson again, he learned from the ship. Therefore, it requires knowing something and he starts it out that way. He is very much aware of his own circumstances. He says: “Knowing that the laying aside of my human body is imminent.” And again we have perfect passive participle of o)ida. This is the second time. Here is a man who can face the reality of dying and not be concerned, at least not about dying, about getting the message through; “just as our Lord Jesus Christ has made it clear to me” — the Lord Jesus Christ made it clear to Peter how he would die and Peter was simply making note of this fact.

Verse 15 — Peter notes in passing that death does not destroy Bible doctrine and that, in effect, there is something in this life that you can acquire and take with you, doctrine resident in the soul. For those who have learned no doctrine they have nothing to take with them.

“Moreover” is again the post positive enclitic use of the particle de which emphasises Peter’s approaching death in which he will be removed from this life and enter into the presence of the Lord. Therefore his diligence, the momentum of his diligence. “I will endeavour” is the future active indicative of the verb spoudazw. It means to be diligent, to be eager, zealous. He is motivated even in the dying part of his life to put this package together for you so that you will be reminded and never forget it. Translation: “Indeed I will be diligent.”

The word “that” is not correct as it is translated in the King James. It is the emphatic use of kai and it should be translated “in fact.”

Next in the Greek text comes an adverb, e(kastote, which means “at any time” or “always.” It is an adverb of time. It refers to the availability of doctrine in time only. The issue is to learn doctrine NOW. You are left here to use your freewill, no matter what distraction comes your way, to make doctrine your number one priority and to learn doctrine.

“that you may be able” — the present active infinitive of exw plus su. “that at any time you may have” (the doctrine — it is available). Doctrine is available now, it is available in time. It is what you do with doctrine in time that really counts. And if doctrine is the reason why we all continue to live then obviously doctrine must have the number one priority.

“after my decease” — the word “decease” here, meta plus the accusative of e)xodoj, after my departure.

“to call these things to remembrance” — we have the present middle infinitive of poiew which means to do, to make. But it means more than that here because you have a noun with it in the accusative as the direct object, which is mnhmh, which with poiew means to do a memory. It is an idiom which means to recall these things. Why is it important to remember? because there comes a time when under pressure, memory is concentration, and concentration is thinking, and thinking in disaster is what the lesson is all about.

Translation: “Indeed I will be diligent in fact, at any time you may have the doctrine after my death, to call to remembrance these things.”

Principle

1. Doctrine continues in spite of the death or removal of any great teacher, such as Peter.

2. Peter is about to die but doctrine goes on forever. Communicators come and communicators go but doctrine goes on forever. You need a communicator in order to receive it so that when you die you can take it with you.