The readings for Pentecost 11 are taken from Job 38:4-18; Romans 10:5-17; and Matthew 14:22-33.
Job’s ego was ever so restless in arguing his own cause and righteousness against his “friends” and against God. Notice how God shuts that ego down so that He can raise up Job’s regenerate soul and restore to Job more life than Job could have imagined.
Paul shuts down the ego of the Romans by the same means—by confronting them with how the law works. The law will not justify you or give you life unless you keep it perfectly (which is what Jesus did in our place). Contrast the restlessness of our ego with the life of the soul regenerated by God’s Word and Spirit. The soul rests in honesty about dependence on God. It does not talk or think about what we do, but about what God is always doing for us.
Matthew records more restlessness of the human ego as the apostles cry out for fear in the storm. Jesus confronts their egos with the law: “O you of little rest in honesty about dependence, why did you doubt?” They doubted for the same reason we do—the corruption of Adam in our ego makes us pretend we are God and when it meets anything that proves we are not God, it cries and laments and resents. When our ego sinks into the truth, Jesus takes our hand and raises us up in our regenerate soul and stays with us to keep us at rest through the course of our life in this troubled world.