Jesus to the Rescue

Mark 6:45-56
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, June 07, 2020
Copyright © 2020, Gregory Broderick

Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of Him to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd.   After leaving them, He went up on a mountainside to pray.

When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and He was alone on land.   He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them.   About the fourth watch of the night He went out to them, walking on the lake.   He was about to pass by them, but when they saw Him walking on the lake, they thought He was a ghost.   They cried out, because they all saw Him and were terrified.

Immediately He spoke to them and said, “Take courage! It is I.   Don’t be afraid.”   Then He climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down.   They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.

When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there.   As soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus.   They ran throughout that whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard He was.   And wherever He went—into villages, towns or countryside—they placed the sick in the marketplaces.   They begged Him to let them touch even the edge of His cloak, and all who touched Him were healed.

Mark 6:45–56

 

We previously studied this passage, principally focusing on the miraculous event that Jesus walked on water as a demonstration of His sovereignty and divinity.  We heard that this event puts us to a stark choice.  This was not a miracle that could be faked.  It was not a miracle that could be misunderstood or misinterpreted.  Many people saw Him walk on water.   It says that Jesus got into the boat with them and went over to the other side.  There is no confusion about what happened.  They traveled together.  There is no possible misunderstanding.  We must either take that miracle as it is, and we must confess Christ as Lord and God, as He said He was and as He proved he was, or we must reject the truth of the Bible and demote the Bible to fraud or myth.  Those are the two choices that we have.  It is either true or it is false.  This miracle and others like it, especially the resurrection, put us to that stark choice.  They are the factual basis for Christianity, and if the factual basis is false, then so is our faith.

That is all I had intended to preach from this passage.  I had not intended to say anything else.  In fact, if you go back and listen, you can hear me say I am not going to speak other things in this passage.  That was my idea.  But the Holy Spirit spoke to me earlier this week and said, “You will preach something else”—a specific word.  That is the word that I have for today.  So this morning we want to focus on the substance of these events that occurred in Mark 6:45–56 and discover what they teach us about God and about ourselves.

Jesus Sees Your Problem

In chapter 6, right before our passage this morning, Jesus has just performed an outstanding miracle:  feeding a crowd of five thousand men with only five loaves and two fish, and ending up somehow with twelve basketsful left over, which is more than He started with.  But rather than bask in the afterglow of this miracle and soak up the adoration of this crowd, Jesus moved on.  They wanted to make Him king, we are told in the parallel passage in John 6:15.  But Jesus did not come for such a minor office.  No, verse 45 says that immediately He made His disciples get into the boat and they went ahead to the other side.

Jesus Himself went and dismissed the crowd.  Then He went up on a mountainside to pray, and it seems that He prayed for a long time.  Verse 48 says that He was up there until the fourth watch of the night, which is three or four o’clock in the morning.  We do not know when they finished their meal, but he prayed long enough for evening to come.  And He prayed long enough for the disciples to get three or four miles out into the lake in a storm, rowing into the teeth of the wind.

Picture these disciples.  They are out in the boat.  It is dark, and they are struggling against the wind.  Open water is tough enough to row in on a calm day and in a special racing boat.  It must have been even more difficult at night after a long and intense day of ministry and being out there in a low-tech fishing boat.  On top of all that, the exhausted disciples are rowing into a stiff wind, and they were struggling.  It says the wind was against them.  It says they were toiling.  They were exhausted and they were making very little headway.

Remember, these are rough and tough men.  These are experienced fishermen.  They are used to rowing the boat.  They are used to difficult conditions.  But despite all their strength, despite all their experience, despite their rough and tough nature, they were struggling, they were fading, and there was no help to come.

The middle of the lake is a lonely place to have a problem.  Nobody is coming along to help you if you get into trouble, as they did.  And it says here that Jesus was not with them.  It says He was alone on the land.  The disciples could not call Him.  They could not text Him.  They could not communicate with Him in any way.  They probably could not even be seen by human eyes out in the lake, in the dark of evening, in the small speck of a boat.  They are all alone.  They could not even be seen.

But, praise God, He is not limited as we are.  He can see us even though we think He is far away or up on a mountainside.  He can see us even though it is too dark for us to see.  He can see us way out on the lake, in the storm, obscured by the clouds, obscured by the waves.  He can see us.  He sees everything and He knows everything.  Psalm 147:5 says, “His understanding is infinite.”  Hebrews 4:13 says, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.”  He knows when we lie down and He knows when we get up.  He knows the secrets of our hearts, it says in Psalm 44:21.  He knows every thought before we think it, every word before we speak it, and every act before we do it.  Think of Cain or Achan or Ananias.  He knows everything that happens.  He knows how many hairs are on your head.  He knows every detail.  He knows everything that has happened.  He knows everything that will happen, and He is infinite in knowledge and infinite in understanding.

So even though it is difficult for us, it is no problem for Him to see His disciples alone on the lake.  Even at night, and even way up on the mountain.  It is no problem for Him to see them, and it is no problem for Him to see you alone in your house, alone in your struggle.  Even if you think of Him as far away—far away in heaven or far away someplace—He is not far away.  He is everywhere.  He is immanent, everywhere present.  As we read in Jeremiah 23:24, “I fill heaven and earth.”  Acts 17:27 tells us directly He is not far from each of us.  So He is not there generally; He is there next to each of us, each of you.  Psalm 139 puts it rather more poetically.  It says, “Where can I go from Your Spirit?  Where can I flee from Your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, You are there. . . . even the darkness will not be dark to you.”

Do you have a problem this morning?  Know that Jesus sees your problem.  Do you have a struggle?  Jesus sees your struggle.  Are you straining at the oars?  He sees you straining at the oars.  He sees you, and He allows these troubles for your good.  Is there a besetting sin that feels like the wind is against you, and that no matter how hard you try, you cannot overcome it.  That all your strength and experience and effort cannot seem to overcome it?  Jesus sees that too.

To God’s people, to those who have confessed Him as Lord and trusted Him as Savior, this seeing is a great comfort.  God sees my trouble and He will act.  He will do something about it.  I am not left to deal with it on my own.  He is the God who sees me.  This is a great comfort.  What more comfort could you want than knowing God sees me?

This comfort for the true believer is a great terror for everyone else.  You see, He sees us, but He sees you too.  He sees your sin.  He sees your rebellion.  He sees your rejection of Him.  He sees your mockery of Him and of His people.  He sees your sneering and your persecution of His beloved children.  He sees your pornography, your homosexuality, your abortion, your greed, your hatred, your envy, your idolatry and every other sin.  He sees it all.

Nothing in all creation is hidden from His sight.  You cannot hide anything from Him.  Achan hid the silver and the gold and the Babylonish garment.  We just read about it in Joshua 7.  He carefully hid these things in his tent, in the ground.  No one knew.  But God knew.  He exposed Achan before all the people, and Achan and his entire family were destroyed.  So also with Ananias and Sapphira.  They thought they could hide the price for the land.  They thought they could fool everyone.  They told no one.  They agreed.  They conspired to keep it a secret.  But they could not successfully lie to the Holy Spirit.  God knew the truth, and killed them (Acts 5).

You cannot hide your sin from God.  He knows.  He says in Jeremiah 16:17–18, “My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes.  I will repay them double for their wickedness and their sin.”  God sees.  We must all face God eventually, in his time and on his terms.  At that time, books will be opened.  Revelation 20:12 says, “The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.”  At that time, there will be no escape, no argument, and no way out.

So for the unbeliever, this is a great terror: God sees me.  And God’s omniscience, His perfect knowledge of everything, is most fearsome for false believers; for those who say they are Christians, but who refuse to bow their knees before Him, and who refuse to pay Him the glad obedience that He is due.  Such false believers, of course, can look good to us.  We have experience with it.  They can be regular church goers.  They can be elders.  They can even be pastors—not in this church, but they can be pastors in some other church.  Such false believers can look good.  They can also sound good.  They may cry, “Hallelujah!” They may raise their hands.  There is nothing wrong with raising hands.  But they may raise hands.  They may pray loud prayers.  They may go around calling everyone “Brother” and “Sister.”  Such false believers can indeed sound good.  They can even do good.  So they can look good, they can sound good.

They can even do good.  Judas, for example, performed many miracles.  He was a trusted treasurer.  He preached the word.  He went out and drove out demons.  He did many good things.  But he was false.  It looked good, it sounded good, it seemed good, but it was not good.  Like all false believers, like all who masquerade as angels of light, eventually the mask falls.  Eventually you will show your true colors.  As they say, “Truth will out.”  In due time, your foot shall slip if you are a false believer.

You may fool your friends.  You may fool your parents.  You may fool even your wife or your husband.  You can fool your home group leader.  You can fool the elders.  If you are highly, highly skilled, you may even fool the pastor.  You can surely fool yourself.  Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked; who can know it?” You can fool all those people.  You can fool yourself.  But you cannot fool God.  He knows.  He knows right now, and He will know then.  If you are a false believer, He will say to you on that day those fearsome words: “Depart from me.  I never knew you!” You will be, as our Pastor has preached, surprised by hell.

So whatever your condition—believer, unbeliever, false believer—whatever your condition, Jesus sees you.  He sees your problem.  He knows.

Jesus Goes Out to You

As I said, the fact that Jesus sees our problem is a great comfort to His people, not merely because He is aware of it—that would be very little comfort—it is a great comfort because He sees to do something about it.  He sees the problems of His people, and He acts on those problems in His perfect timing for our highest good.

In Genesis 16:13, He is called “El Roi,” “the God who sees.”  It is not just that He observes, but, as I said, He sees to do something.  As 2 Chronicles 16:9 tells us, “The eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.”  He is looking out—not just to see what is going on, but “to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.”  Psalm 33 says, “The eyes of the Lord are those who fear Him, . . . to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine” (Ps. 33:18–19).

So it is not just that His eyes are on his people to feel sorry for them.  No, it is to deliver them, to keep them alive.  He is not the blind Watchmaker—the God of the Deists—a god who created the world and then walked away and let it pursue its own course.  He is not aloof.  He is intimately involved.  We know this from history.  He saw the Israelites suffering under Pharaoh’s oppression in Egypt, and He moved miraculously to free His people.  He saw their oppression.  He heard their cries.  And all through the book of Judges, we see the same idea.  He saw, He heard, and He did something about it.  (GTB)  He sent an Ehud, a Barak, a Deborah, a Gideon, and a mighty Samson to deliver His people from their trouble.  He sees and then He does something about it.

He says in Isaiah 41:10, “Fear not, for I am with you. . . . I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”  He sees and He does something about it.  He did it for them in Egypt.  He did it for them throughout the book of Judges.  He sent Esther to the throne room to save His people when they were in big trouble.  He sent the ravens to feed Elijah in the desert.  He sent an angel to release Peter from the prison, and He arrested Paul on the road to Damascus.  He sees His people and He moves in their behalf.

Indeed, in our text, He says, “Take courage! It is I.  Don’t be afraid.”  He is still saying today that He will do something for His people.  No problem is too great for His saving grace, and no matter is too small to not warrant His attention.  Daniel 2 reminds us that He sets up kings and deposes them.  He takes care of big matters.  First Kings 17 reminds us that He sees the starving widow and makes provision for her too.  He deals with kings and He deals with widows.  No problem escapes His attention. Notice, also, Jesus came personally.  He did not have to go out there on the water, but He came personally to His disciples to help them out.

He sees our smallest needs and He sees our greatest need also, and He provides for us.  Our greatest need, of course, is for regeneration, for forgiveness of sin, for peace with God.  He is no mere social worker to help solve our daily problems.  He helps solves our daily problems too, but that is not His main issue.  He did not come just to make our lives easier or more pleasant.  No, He sees our greatest problem and He does something about that.

The very purpose of our existence is to glorify God and to enjoy fellowship with Him forever.  It was this way in the garden in the beginning.  But sinful man threw it all away.  Sinful man believed the devil’s lie that something else, something besides God, something besides fellowship with God and His order, would make us happy.  And we believe that same lie today, don’t we?  Whether it is money, career, or autonomy, it is the same lie of the devil.  Something else will make you happy; go and get it.  Sinful man threw it all away.  He sinned.  And we, by default now, are fundamentally separated from God.  We were supposed to be together with God.  We are supposed to have fellowship with God.  But we are separated from God by our sin, stained by that original sin of our first parents Adam and Eve in the garden, and stained by our personal sinful actions in our lives, whether in thought, in deed, or, in reality, all three.

Because God is perfectly holy, He cannot commune with us who are not holy.  Because God is perfectly just, He must demand satisfaction.  He must demand payment for that sin before He can restore us to fellowship.  But the only problem is, our sin is infinite.  It is a sin against infinite God:  an infinite sin that requires an infinite punishment.  So we must suffer the infinite punishment before we can have fellowship with Him.  But, of course, as finite creatures, we cannot pay this infinite debt.  So we are stuck.  We have an unsolvable problem.  Like those disciples, we can strain against the oars.  We can row into the teeth of the howling wind.  But we will make no meaningful progress against our infinite debt.  We will remain stuck in the middle of our vast lake of sin.

But if Jesus saw the disciples in their sad condition out on the boat, if He went out to them in this relatively minor problem of being stuck out in the storm, do you think He will leave our great problem unsolved?  Do you think He will rescue us from the boat and from the storm, but not from sin and hell and eternal death?  The answer is no.  The God of perfect holiness, the God of perfect justice, is also the God of perfect love.  So at just the right time, at the pinnacle of history, He sent His eternal Son, Jesus Christ, very God and very man.  He sent His eternal Son to become man to die in our place to satisfy that infinite debt that we could not pay.  He satisfied it with His perfect obedience in His life and His infinite merit, and then He died in our place.  He became a man to stand in our place to obey God the Father perfectly and though sinless, to die, to pay the price.  The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23).  That is the price He had to pay.  He did that so that we could have the gift of God, eternal life in Jesus Christ.

He saw it all—all our great and infinite need.  He did not see it from a mountaintop.  He did not see it far away, in a cloud-adorned heaven.  No, He saw it before all time.  Before all time, God the Father planned our salvation.  God the Son gladly agreed to achieve it for us in time, and God the Holy Spirit applies it to us even in our day.  Our God is the God who sees and He is the God who moves.  He saw our great need for eternal salvation in infinity past, and He moved in our behalf (2 Tim. 1:9).

Jesus Was about to Pass Them By

God makes provision for our salvation.  He makes it available to all people, but not everyone will receive it.  He will pass you by if, in your wickedness, arrogance, or self-sufficiency, you refuse to cry out to Him.  As I said, it is free to all, but not all will benefit.  Romans 10:13 says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  Not everyone will be saved, not everyone who calls will be saved, but everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

You must cry out to Jesus, or He will pass you by.  This requires total surrender all areas of life for all time.  It is not a partial thing.  It is not for part of life.  It is all of life for all time.  Perhaps for that reason, most will not do it.  They love their sin too much.  They have bought into the devil’s lie to worship something else—money, power, autonomy, family, or whatever else it is.  The devil will trade for whatever you want.  They have bought into the devil’s lie to worship created things.  Indeed, sin has corrupted the heart of man so thoroughly that we are morally incapable of choosing God.  We could say we are unwilling, unable, and unqualified to do so.  So we must rely on God.  He must first move in our hearts and regenerate us, the people He chose before all time in His electing love.  He must give us new hearts and new minds capable of understanding the truth, capable of putting our faith in Him, capable of crying out and calling on the name of the Lord (Ezek. 36:26).

Notice our inability.  Verse 52 of our text says even the disciples did not understand.  Recall that these were godly men, devout men.  They had left everything to follow Jesus.  They had seen all the miracles.  They just saw the feeding of the five thousand.  They saw the paralytics healed.  They saw demons driven out.  They saw the raising of a dead girl and the healing of a sick woman.  They had heard all the teaching straight from Jesus, how He was the Lord of the Sabbath.  They heard about the lamp on the stand and the mustard seed.  They heard it all, saw it all, and did it all.  But they did not understand yet, it says in verse 52.

Their problem was not lack of evidence.  Their problem was not lack of intelligence.  These were not stupid people.  Their problem was not lack of teaching.  No, it gives us the reason:  they did not understand because their hearts were hardened.  This is the problem.  The human heart is the problem.  So we all need a new heart and a new mind.  Then, when God gives us the new heart and the new mind, we can cry out to Him.  Then we can repent and our sins.  Then we can live for Him.  Then we can be saved and restored to peace and fellowship with God.  Hallelujah!

Even though God must unilaterally and monergistically regenerate us and make us able, we still have personal responsibility.  We must still cry out, lest He pass us by, as we read in verse 49.  What do we cry out?  Jesus is Lord.  Have mercy on me, a sinner! That is the cry.  We may cry out in fear, as they did.  We may lack complete understanding, as they did.  We do not need to be perfect.  But we must cry out.  So I ask: Have you cried out?  He is passing by right now.  Have you cried out?  He is passing by today, and He may not pass by again.  Cry out.  Cry out today, “Save me, Lord Jesus!” Cry out, “Do not pass me by.”  Cry out, “I believe; help Thou my unbelief!”

If You Cry Out, He Will Not Turn Away

Notice that Jesus responds to their cry—their little-faith cry, their little cry of confusion, their little cry of fear.  He does not keep going.  He does not ignore their cry.  He does not rebuke them for their fear or for their lack of understanding or their hardened hearts.  He does not even ask them any further questions.  What is his response?  “Take courage! It is I; don’t be afraid.”

This is the response of Jesus to everyone who cries out to him.  I already quoted Romans 10:13: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  Everyone!  John 6:37 says, “Whoever comes to me, I will never drive away.”  This is an old idea.  God has always operated in this fashion.  Psalm 145:18 says, “The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.”  We see the same idea in Acts 17:27, which I already quoted.  Jesus is always saying, “Be not afraid.”  If Jesus is there, if He is with you, if you are His beloved and have put your faith in Him, you have nothing to fear.  Your problem is already solved.  He knows the plans He has for you—plans to prosper you and not to harm you (Jer.  29:11).  Nothing bad can happen to you if you are with Jesus.  All things must work together for the good of those who love Him, because He said so (Rom. 8:28).

Now, I did not say “nothing difficult.”  I did not say “nothing unpleasant.”  But nothing bad can happen to you because God has ordained it all for your good.  Not a hair of your head can be touched without His say-so, and even then only for your good (Luke 12:7).  No one can snatch us from His hand (John 10:28).  We are eternally secure when we are in Jesus’ hand.

So He says, “Be not afraid.”  He says it more than forty times throughout the Bible.  Over and over again He says, “Be not afraid.”  Do you have trouble?  Is it great trouble?  Is it small trouble?  Be not afraid.  Jesus said so.  Look to God instead.  Like the author of Hebrews, we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.  What can man do to me?” The answer is nothing.  He says today as he said then, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you.  I have called you each by name.  You are Mine.”  Just like the disciples in the boat, I urge you to cry out to God in your trouble.  He will respond the same way as always—savingly, mercifully, confidently.  “Fear not: It is I.  Take courage.”

Jesus Gets into the Boat

After they cried out to Jesus and He responds to them, He does not keep going.  Instead, He gets in the boat.  Friends, Jesus is with us and He remains with us.

Jesus does not need a boat.  He did not have to get into the boat.  He was already walking on the water, so He did not need the boat to get to the other side.  No, He deigns to get into the boat with us, to lower Himself for our good, to lower Himself, for our sake.  It is just as He promised: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom.  10:9).  To all of His people He said, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you” (Deut.  31:6; Heb.  13:5).  When He says, “Don’t be afraid,” it is not that there is nothing to be afraid of; it is that He is with us.  There is nothing to be afraid of because He is with us.

In Matthew 28:20 we see the risen Lord Jesus charging His disciples as he sends them out into the world, and the same charge is given to us today.  He says to them and He says to us, “Behold, surely I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.”  He does not save us and just leave us any more than He created the world and walked away.  No, He is engaged, as I said earlier.  He is involved, and it is not from afar.  It is not even from nearby.  No, He is with us intimately.  He gets into the boat, so to speak.  He explains in John 14, “If anyone loves Me, He will obey My teaching.”  This is talking about true believers.  “My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23).  God dwells with us.  So He is not over there on the mountainside.  He is not even over there in the chair.  He is with us.  He is dwelling within us.  He is God with us, Immanuel.

Elsewhere it says the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, also dwells within you.  So we see that God dwells with us—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit dwell with us and in us.  Collectively and individually, we are God’s temple, the place where He dwells.  It is an amazing truth.  We do not stop and think about it enough, but it is an amazing truth.  God dwells with us and in us.  And when the triune God dwells within you, when He is with you because you are with Him, your problems are solved.  Only good things can happen to you, eternally good things (Rom.  8:28).

So those troubles you have, those troubles you are facing—that wind, that storm—can only be for your good.  And notice, when Jesus gets into the boat with them, immediately the wind dies down.  The wind that was against you dies down (v. 51).  When Jesus gets into the boat, the waves that threaten to capsize you give way to calm waters and smooth sailing.

It is not that there are not any problems anymore, but your problems all come into perspective.  You may still have to row the boat.  There might still be wind.  There might still be waves.  They did still have to row the boat, but they will reach the other side.  You will reach the other side just as they did (v. 53).  You will reach the other side of your trouble, whatever it is.  And you will reach it in the ultimate sense of reaching heaven, glory, eternal life.  Eternal pleasure of worshiping God in spirit and in truth, in perfection, without sin, without pain, without mourning, without tears, with God and with God’s people forever for all eternity.  The way it was meant to be.  This is not a hope-so, not a maybe.  It is a reality.  We will get there because Jesus will go with us.  He made the way for us.  He will deliver us there and we can count on him.  Praise the Lord!

Are you a believer, a child of God, experiencing trouble?  Then know that Jesus sees your problems, just as He saw His disciples out on the lake, straining at the oars.  Know that He sees you straining at the oars, and know that He will come out to you at just the right time.  When that trouble has completed its good work in you, then He will come out.  So keep your eyes out for Him.  Keep on the lookout.  He is coming.  Keep rowing the boat, but keep on the lookout, for He is coming.  He may come, walking on the lake, in a great miracle.  He may send His angels to make provision for you.  He may send a pastor or an elder or a brother or sister in the Lord.  He may come right away, or He may come during the fourth watch of the night.  Whatever is good for you, that is what He is going to do.  However it happens, whenever it happens, He is coming.

Look for Him in joyful expectation and know that nothing can stop Him—not the wind, not the waves, not the storm, not the devil.  Nothing can stop Him.  And when He comes, when you see Him, do not let Him pass you by.  Call out to Him in faith and hear that reassuring word:  “Take courage.  It is I; do not be afraid.”  Fix your eyes on Jesus.  He will lead you safely through your trouble, and He will lead you safely home to glory.

To the unbeliever or false believer, I say the same thing: Cry out to Him, but not to solve your worldly problems.  Those are no big deal.  No matter how big or small they seem, they are tiny, they are insignificant, they are nothing next to eternity.  And those are the stakes in this life: eternity in hell or eternity in heaven.  There is no other way to go.  There are only two outcomes: eternal life and eternal death.  Eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ or eternal torment in agony in hell outside of Christ.

So cry out to Him.  He is passing by right now.  Cry out to Him.  You already know that I am right.  You already know that what I am saying is true and reasonable.  God is speaking to you right now through me, so do not be a fool.  Do not reject His offer of grace.  Do not keep up the mask of fake Christianity.  Instead, call out to Him, and He will come over.  He will say, “Be not afraid.”  He will receive you and He will save you.  He will welcome you.  He will get in the boat with you.  And He will dwell with you.  He will help you to walk according to His word, to obey Him.  He will help you to live a life for His glory and to tell others the good news for all people, the good news that saves you, the good news of great joy:  the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He will take you safely to the other side with all of us together secure and happy in heaven in glory with God forever.  Hallelujah.