Trust I Am (Mark #22)
A few years ago, a fantasy sports company had a young quarterback do man-on-the-street interviews.
At the time he was a fresh college graduate — a two-time Heisman finalist who had just led his team to an upset win in the national championship game over a program everyone assumed was unbeatable. He was projected as one of the top picks in that year’s NFL draft.
So they handed him a microphone and sent him out to interview people about the upcoming draft — and specifically about himself.
It is genuinely funny. He is standing there playing reporter, pushing the microphone into people’s faces, asking who their team is and who they hope gets drafted. Some of them light up: “Oh man, I hope we get that guy, he is amazing, he is going to be great.” And then he turns to the camera and signs off with his own name — and you watch their jaws hit the pavement. They want photos. They think it is the greatest moment of their week.
But the funnier ones are the people who trash him — while he is standing right in front of them.
One man goes on at length: “I do not think he is all that good. He does not have the arm strength. I do not think he will make it in the NFL. I do not think he can handle NFL defenses.” And then the quarterback turns to the camera and signs off with his own name — and you watch the couple simply melt. She scrambles to recover: “Well, you would probably be pretty good with, um, a different team…”
They assumed they were talking to just another reporter. They had no idea they were standing in front of a future star.
It was a case of mistaken identity.
We All Do This
Maybe you were at the company Christmas party, fell into conversation with someone, and only later discovered they were your boss’s spouse — and then replayed the entire exchange in your head hoping you had not said anything about your boss.
Or maybe it happened to you this week. With everyone in face masks, somebody greeted you warmly on your way out of the store, clearly knowing exactly who you were, and you played along — “Hey! How are you?” — and walked away with no idea who that was. Anybody? Yes. All of us.
My sophomore year of college my glasses broke. This was before one-hour repairs, so I had to wait an entire day — and I have been blind as a bat since fourth grade. So I am squinting my way through campus, and I finally sit down at dinner across from one of my dorm mates.
A mutual friend walks up and starts talking to the guy across the table. Gives me a glance or two. Completely ignores me. Which struck me as odd, since he was my friend too.
Then he turns to walk away and I say, “All right, see you later.”
He recognized my voice. He spun around: “Wait — that’s you?” Without the glasses he had taken me for some stranger visiting his friend.
We have all made that mistake. And today we are going to watch the disciples make it with Jesus. They are about to see Him do something miraculous, and it will surprise them in a way that reveals they still do not actually know who He is. They think they do. He keeps surprising them.
My hope and prayer is that you do not make the same mistake — because if you understand who Jesus truly is, it changes everything, and it will carry you through the hardest seasons of your life.
Mark 6:45–52
“Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land.
“And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.’ And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”
What Just Happened Before This
This comes directly on the heels of last week. Jesus had just learned that His cousin John the Baptist had been beheaded, and He was in mourning. At the same time His disciples were returning from the mission trip He had sent them on two by two, full of stories about what they had experienced.
He saw how exhausted everyone was, and He was grieving, so they set out for a desolate place to rest. Instead they found an enormous crowd waiting — and Jesus saw them “like sheep without a shepherd” and had compassion on them, meeting their spiritual, emotional, and physical needs.
One of the ways He met their physical need was to feed them. He took five loaves and two fish from a boy’s lunch and fed five thousand men — which likely does not count the women and children present. That could easily be ten or fifteen thousand people.
Now they have eaten their fill, the leftovers have been gathered, and evening has come. Jesus starts sending the crowd home.
And then, rather than taking the disciples up into the mountains for the rest they came for, He does something unexpected: He puts them in a boat and sends them across to Bethsaida while He goes up the mountain alone to pray.
Nine Hours Into the Wind
Notice the timing. They get into the boat in the evening — the sun is setting, so think seven, eight, maybe nine o’clock.
Then verse 48 tells us it is the fourth watch of the night. Somehow, from the mountain, Jesus can see them fighting the wind — perhaps there is a full moon on the water.
Remember from chapter 4 that sudden storms on the Sea of Galilee were common because of how the winds work there. So they are battling one now. And the fourth watch runs from three to six in the morning.
Do the math. If they launched around eight in the evening and it is now four in the morning, these men have been fighting that wind for six to nine hours.
They must be wrecked. It is the middle of the night. Nobody is sleeping. And if they are anything like me, they have started to grumble. Why does He get to go up the mountain and rest while we are stuck out here? He probably knew this was going to happen. Why are we doing this? Why are we out here alone?
Have you ever been there? You are in a genuinely hard stretch, nothing is going right, and you fight and fight and fight — and the money still is not there for the bills. The health crisis has not resolved. The relationship has not improved. It just keeps getting harder.
I watched a testimony this week from a man who was a third-generation contractor. He worked alongside his father, eventually went out on his own, outgrew him within a few years, and bought him out. He had eighty-plus employees and a business that ran well enough without his constant attention that he had real flexibility — which he poured into serving his church, because he was hungry to serve.
Everything he touched was working. And then the real estate market turned. Their net worth began to drop, and drop. He was convinced they could ride it out. They ended up upside down by about a million and a half dollars, and they went bankrupt.
He said he wrestled with God through the whole thing and resisted every step. He had started reading the Bible cover to cover every year right around when it began, and it made no sense to him that God would take the business away when he had put God first.
So he would slip out to the woods where nobody could find him, in any weather, and read God’s word — and the promises he found there, instead of encouraging him, made him furious. He would challenge God to reconcile the promises on the page with the circumstances in front of him.
Maybe you have not lost a business. But most of us have been through something hard enough to ask: God, where are You? Why have You left me alone? I think I am doing everything right and nothing is going right. Why am I fighting this wind?
Maybe you have felt alone. Maybe you have felt like God was not with you. Maybe that is exactly how the disciples felt out on that water. Why did He leave us out here?
The thing is, He did not.
“He Meant to Pass By Them”
Jesus comes down the mountain and starts walking across the water toward them. We will get to the walking in a moment, but first look at the end of verse 48: he meant to pass by them.
To modern ears that sounds almost cruel. It reads like a prank — like He is going to blow past them, beat them to Bethsaida, and be standing there laughing when they finally drag in. You guys should have seen yourselves fighting that wind. All you had to do was walk. Oh wait — you cannot walk on water, because you are not God. Good one.
It sounds like a jerk move. But I think Mark’s Jewish audience would have gasped at that phrase — because in the Old Testament, there are moments where God passes by.
In Exodus 34, Moses asks to see God, and God says no one can look on His face and live. So God places him in a cleft, covers him with His hand, and passes by — and then removes His hand so Moses can see His back.
Something similar happens with Elijah in 1 Kings 19. God passes by, and there is a great wind, an earthquake, a fire — and the text tells us God was not in any of them. He was in the quiet.
So I think Mark is pointing to the divinity of Jesus with that one phrase.
And Then There Is the Water
Psalm 77:19 says: “Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.”
Asaph is writing about God and the mighty things He has done. Read one verse further and he begins talking about Moses and Aaron, so you could reasonably say verse 19 is about the Exodus — God parting the Red Sea so the people could walk through. I think that is part of it.
But I also think he is saying that God can do anything He wants and make anything His path — even the waters.
And now, in Mark 6, here is Jesus walking on the water, making His path through the sea, His footprints unseen.
Jesus is showing yet again that He is God, and Mark wants his readers to catch it. He passes by like God. He walks on water like God.
And the disciples look out of that boat and do not say, “Look — it is God.”
They say, “It is a ghost.”
Now, I do not believe in ghosts. But I suspect that if I had been in that boat I might have reconsidered. It is three in the morning. It is pitch black. You are exhausted from hours of fighting the wind. And suddenly something is moving past you across the water, robes whipping in the gale.
They are terrified.
“It Is I”
Verse 50: “But immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.'”
There is something in that phrase worth stopping on. In the Greek, “it is I” can equally be rendered “I AM.”
You might wonder why our English translations do not simply say “Take heart, I am.” Because it would sound bizarre. I am… what? I am Jesus? Well, yes, partly. But I think He is also saying: I am the I AM. I am here. I am God. I am with you.
And if you are wondering where “I AM” comes from, it is Exodus 3.
Moses has fled Egypt, where he was raised as a prince, after killing an Egyptian. He has spent forty years in the wilderness working as a shepherd. He has met a family, married one of their daughters, started a family of his own. Life is settled. Life is safe.
And then he sees a bush on fire that is not burning up. The flame is there, but the bush is fine. He is curious, so he approaches — and hears the voice of God telling him he is going back to Egypt.
What follows is a masterclass in stalling. I cannot — I stutter. Fine, I will send your brother to speak for you. I have nothing with me. What is in your hand? A staff. Throw it down — and it becomes a snake.
Finally Moses tries this: If I show up and say God sent me to free you from slavery, they are going to ask which god. What name do I give them?
Exodus 3:14: “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.'”
So when Jesus is out on that water saying, “Take heart, it is I,” I believe He is saying: Take heart. I AM. I am with you. I am for you. I am in control. I am God.
And They Still Do Not See It
They do not recognize Him as God when He means to pass by. They do not recognize Him as God when He walks on the water. They do not recognize Him as God even when He declares I AM.
Verses 51–52: “And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”
Here is Jesus making it as plain as it can be made — and not only in this story. Think about everything we have already watched in Mark. It could not be clearer. And Mark tells us their hearts were hardened. They were, in effect, spiritually blind. They could not see Jesus for who He actually was.
He is doing extraordinary things right in front of them. They believe they understand who He is. And they are in a case of mistaken identity.
We Do This With God
Some of us have been in church nearly our whole lives. Some of us are newer and still working out who God is. But when we carry the wrong identity of God, that is when the fear starts. That is when the anger starts. That is when we find ourselves out in our own emotional boat muttering: Why is He doing this? Where is He? I thought You could handle this. What is going on?
In the study our growth groups just started, there is a true account of a couple who lost their son in a shooting. He had always wanted to serve his community, so he became a police officer. During a routine traffic stop — his partner had made the stop and he came to back him up — a shooting broke out, and both officers were killed.
His mother describes what happened inside her afterward. She remembers feeling sick, and not understanding. She thought about all the verses that say He will lift you up, that He comforts those who mourn. She found herself yelling at God — feeling nothing but silence back. This enormous thing happened and I have done everything right. Where are You? Why are You not taking care of my pain?
She had, by her own account, a mistaken identity of God. She had been relating to Him as a very good, very powerful human being in a transactional arrangement: God, if I read my Bible, if I pray enough, if I go to church, if I do the right things — then You owe me. We have a deal.
That is not who God is.
Who God actually is: a God so passionately in love with you that when the image He placed in you was distorted by sin, He did everything necessary — came to earth and died in your place — so your sin could be forgiven.
He owes you nothing. He has already given you everything.
Trust I AM
So when you sit there thinking, God, I have been good, I have done this and this, You owe me — why am I still in this boat fighting the wind?
Why am I fighting this wind politically, culturally, at work, at home, inside my own head? I thought You would be there for me.
What you need to hear today is that Jesus is walking right next to you, saying: Trust Me. Do not be afraid. Take heart. Trust that I am with you. Trust that I am in control. Trust that I am aware of every single thing happening to you. Trust that I am God.
Trust I AM.
Father, help us do exactly that — to trust You as the great I AM. You have always existed. You always will. You are so much greater than us.
We confess that we so often mistake You for something less than You are. We shrink You. We will not let You be big enough, powerful enough, loving enough, present enough. So correct our eyesight. Change our minds. Help us see how great and glorious You are, so that seeing it gives us confidence and peace and rest even in our hardest moments.
And I pray for anyone reading this who is in something genuinely brutal right now and feels like they are fighting the wind. They do not know why the relationship is falling apart. They do not know why the prayer for a child has gone unanswered. They do not understand why the bills keep coming, or why the job and the advancement never materialize. They are crying out to You and it does not feel like You are coming through — and then they open the Scriptures and read about all the amazing things You have done, and find themselves waiting, and waiting, and waiting.
Meet them on the water. Amen.
