He Meant to Pass By Them

It is somewhere past three in the morning on the Sea of Galilee. The men in the boat have been rowing since evening. The lake is a few miles across, and they have spent the whole night trying to cross it. Their hands are raw. The shore behind them is gone, and the shore ahead will not come.

Jesus had sent them to the other side. The wind was not their assignment.

Mark tells us one thing about that night that the men in the boat did not know. Jesus saw them. "He saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them." He saw them in the evening, and he came to them in the fourth watch, the last stretch of dark before dawn. For nine hours they believed they were alone. They were not alone. They were seen.

Then comes the strangest sentence in the story: "He meant to pass by them."

He did not mean to pass them by. He meant to pass by them.

In English, to be passed by is to be overlooked, like the car that does not stop. In Scripture it is the opposite. When Moses asked to see God's glory, God said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you." God is not walking away. He is showing himself, and the first thing he names is his goodness.

Moses hid in the rock while the goodness passed by.

Elijah stood at the mouth of the cave while the LORD passed by.

And Job said the One who tramples the waves of the sea passes by, "and I see him not."

Job's whole picture is on the lake. This is not a route. It tells you who is on the water. That night, the goodness of God was walking toward a boat full of frightened men, and they did not see him either.

The storms we row against at three in the morning do not all need a divine explanation. We raised some ourselves. Others came from someone else's choices. Some come with no explanation we will ever be given. Scripture gives us no warrant to stamp God's signature on every wind that rises against us. But none of it is hidden from him, and none of it gets the last word.

The same men had watched five thousand fed from five loaves that afternoon. They "did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened." The problem was not a lack of evidence. It was a failure to carry the afternoon into the night.

He does not explain the night. He shows himself. Ezekiel found the same pattern in a worse place. "The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones." The people had already said it themselves: "Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost." That is the fourth watch at its darkest, when there is nothing left to hope for.

God does not explain the valley. He does not tell the bones how they got there. He says, "I will open your graves." He set the prophet down in the middle of it because he meant to bring them out.

Isaiah names the pattern in one line: "I am the LORD; in its time I will hasten it." The time is his, and it is often later than we would choose. But when it comes, it comes fast. The valley did not rise one bone a year. There was a sound, a rattling, and the bones came together.

The men in the boat did not recognize him. They thought he was a ghost, and they cried out. He did not explain the wind, or the night, or why he came in the fourth watch and not the first. He answered them, "Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid." The Greek is egō eimi: "I am."

Then he got into the boat, and the wind ceased.

Nine hours of rowing. There is no fifth watch.