Signs 5: Walking On Water
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: John 6:16-21
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Good morning, and welcome to Family Worship here at Eastern Hills! If you’re with us this morning online, we’re glad that you are able to take part in our live stream. For those of you here in the room today, its good to see your faces and to worship together with you.
Announcements
Announcements
Happy Father’s Day to all the guys out there. Blessings to those of you who have struggled to become a father, those who have lost a child, and those who have lost their dad this year.
It also happens to be Juneteenth, commemorating the practical end of legalized slavery in the United States on this date in 1865, a critical human rights moment in the history of our nation, when the news and enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation arrived in Galveston, Texas. This year is the first year that New Mexico is recognizing this as a national holiday.
Opening
Opening
This morning, we are continuing our sermon series called “Signs,” in which we are looking at the seven miracles that John kind of sets out in his Gospel as evidences of Jesus’s identity as Messiah and of His divinity. We have considered the first four signs to this point, and this morning, we’re going to step back into the same thread as the fourth sign: Feeding the 5000. Today, we will consider the fifth miraculous sign: Jesus walking on the water of the Sea of Galilee. Before I “dive in” to the Scripture (come on, it’s Father’s Day… I had to have one dad joke), I wanted to just show you a picture from when I was on the Sea of Galilee this February. The Sea was beautifully calm that day, unlike the night which we read about in today’s focal passage. So let’s stand in honor of God’s Word as we read John 6:16-21:
16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17 got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. Darkness had already set in, but Jesus had not yet come to them. 18 A high wind arose, and the sea began to churn. 19 After they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea. He was coming near the boat, and they were afraid. 20 But he said to them, “It is I. Don’t be afraid.” 21 Then they were willing to take him on board, and at once the boat was at the shore where they were heading.
PRAYER (Christ Church Albuquerque, her pastors Nathan Sherman and Kyle Stevens: pray for grace and patience with one another as they go through a time of transition in leadership, overseas ministry members are going thru difficult seasons, pray for continued consistency in sharing the love of Christ as a church family)
Surprise. “An unexpected or astonishing event, fact, or thing.” It’s an interesting word, because context is really an important part of its usage. This is because the word can refer to something unexpected that’s really positive and exciting, like a surprise visit, party, or bonus. However, it can also refer to something sudden that is really negative or scary, like a surprise layoff, diagnosis, or accident. I suppose it’s even possible for a surprise to be a little of both at the same time.
The point isn’t whether a surprise is positive or negative, but that it’s unexpected and astonishing. Surprises come out of nowhere and shock us. I mean, if we could see them coming, they wouldn’t be surprises, right?
We come to this passage immediately on the heels of Jesus doing something completely surprising when He fed perhaps 15- or 20,000 people with just a few loaves and fish. But He wasn’t done that day. He still had more surprises up His sleeve. And we can see in this passage that Jesus surprised two groups:
1: Jesus surprised the people.
1: Jesus surprised the people.
We looked at this a little bit when we considered the fourth sign two weeks ago. The people who received the miraculous food found themselves considering making Jesus their king, but Jesus knew their hearts and knew that He could not accept such a position, because that wasn’t what His mission was. He was already King of kings. So according to verse 15 of John 6, He retreated to a mountain and spent the evening away from the crowds.
15 Therefore, when Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
Mark records that Jesus had actually stayed behind to dismiss the crowds, and had sent His disciples down to the sea. So the crowds knew that Jesus didn’t get in the boat. They knew that His disciples had. And when they awoke the next day, they looked for Jesus but couldn’t find Him. Notice what happened:
22 The next day, the crowd that had stayed on the other side of the sea saw there had been only one boat. They also saw that Jesus had not boarded the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone off alone. 23 Some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. 25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
This was surprising to them because it was highly unlikely that Jesus had walked from where they were around the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum. First of all, people generally didn’t walk great distances by night in the ancient Middle East because it wasn’t particularly safe to do so—especially alone—so they would not have expected that Jesus would have made that trek by Himself in the dark.
Second, remember that the passage said that the disciples had rowed about 3 or 4 miles. The distance from the likely spot of the disciples setting sail to Capernaum following the feeding of the 5,000 by a direct line from the eastern shore across the Sea was about 5 miles. For Jesus to walk that distance in the dark, assuming that He would have been able to stay directly on the shoreline (which He wouldn’t have been able to do, particularly once He reached the inlet of the Jordan) was about 8 miles. Perhaps this is what prompted them to ask Him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
For Jesus to walk around the lake during the night would have been extremely unlikely. But there He was, in Capernaum the next day without having taken a boat. Certainly the average person didn’t think this was miraculous, but it was surprising. But being surprising is something that Jesus often did.
Even as a child, well before His public ministry, Jesus was surprising people. Luke chapter 2 has several mentions of it. The report of His birth amazed people who heard it from the shepherds in Luke 2:18. The prophecy of Simeon about Him surprised Mary and Joseph in Luke 2:33. The Jewish teachers in the Temple were astounded by His understanding and answers about the Scriptures, and His parents were astonished that He had stayed behind in the Temple for that purpose in Luke 2:47-48.
As an adult, there was even more amazement and surprise. Jesus amazed His disciples by eschewing social conventions and speaking directly to a Samaritan woman in John 4:27. Matthew 7:28-29 records that Jesus’s teaching astonished those who listened, because of the authority with which He taught. And when you include the miracles that He did, Jesus astonished people throughout His life. He was surprising to the people of the day.
But then in a broader sense, He surprised the Jews by how He came. Not necessarily that He directly surprised them, because even now many Jews do not believe that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, but it was the fact that He came in a way that they didn’t expect. The Jews had a wrong perspective on who Messiah was going to be. This was why they considered making Him king the day before. They expected a political and military leader, like David had been—a king who would redeem them from the oppression of Rome, and set Israel up again as a world power. Jesus didn’t come in that way. He came not to deliver just the Jews from Roman control, but to offer a way for all of humanity to escape from the control of an enemy much more powerful and much more deadly: sin. The Jews didn’t expect Him to come like that, and so they missed Him. The Jesus who came was too surprising for them.
So the people were more generally surprised. His disciples, however, were in for a complete shock.
2: Jesus surprised His disciples.
2: Jesus surprised His disciples.
When we read through the Gospels, we tend to sort of compress the time in our minds a little bit. I mean, I just preached on the first sign—Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana—on May 15. That’s just 6 Sundays ago—a mere month and 4 days. But in the Gospel of John, the actual time difference between the first sign and the fourth and fifth signs (remember that they happen in the same 24 hour period) was a AT LEAST a year, and perhaps even two years. We know this because after the wedding at Cana, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for the Passover according to John 2:13, and we also know that the Passover is again near at the time Jesus walked on the water, according to John 6:4. Since Passover is an annual feast, the disciples have now been seeing Jesus do the miraculous and the incredible for at least 12 months, and He’s still shocking them with what He is capable of.
This night was no exception:
19 After they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea. He was coming near the boat, and they were afraid. 20 But he said to them, “It is I. Don’t be afraid.” 21 Then they were willing to take him on board, and at once the boat was at the shore where they were heading.
This miracle is recorded in every gospel except for Luke. In both Matthew and Mark, we discover the answer to the question of why they were afraid. It’s because they were certain that they were seeing a ghost:
26 When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost!” they said, and they cried out in fear. 27 Immediately Jesus spoke to them. “Have courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
49 When they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out, 50 because they all saw him and were terrified. Immediately he spoke with them and said, “Have courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” 51 Then he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. They were completely astounded,
I can see what they were a little freaked out. I would have been freaked out if I saw someone walking on the water in the middle of a windstorm in the middle of the night. But once Jesus identified Himself, the disciples were willing for Him to come on board the boat. The Bible says that the disciples were all “completely astounded” at what they witnessed. What a surprise! The wind was blowing, the sea was churning, and Jesus walked across the surface of the water to them. But their fear gave way to peace when Jesus called out to them not to be afraid. But just because they had peace doesn’t mean that they weren’t amazed, “completely astounded.”
They have been walking with Jesus for more than a year, and they still are shocked when Jesus does the miraculous. Mark continues in verse 52 and explains their being “completely astounded:”
52 because they had not understood about the loaves. Instead, their hearts were hardened.
They were surprised by the miraculous work of Jesus because their hearts were hardened. They refused to completely believe the reality of what they witnessed as they walked with Jesus. They saw and experienced the feeding of the 5000 with their own eyes, had picked up the 12 baskets full of leftover pieces from 2 fish and 5 loaves with their own hands, and they still didn’t get it.
This is why this is such a powerful sign. Jesus demonstrated in that moment that even the things His disciples thought they knew about Him were not the whole story. He was even bigger than that. He showed that even the laws of physics bow before Him, and He showed that He had the power to rescue His followers from the storms of life through His mere presence. He is both God and Messiah.
So Jesus surprised both the people who were there at the feeding of the 5000 and His disciples with His jaunt across the Sea of Galilee. And as I reflected on the meaning of this truth for us today, it led me to a question:
3: Is Jesus still surprising?
3: Is Jesus still surprising?
The reason that this question is important is that it gives evidence of who we are and who we believe Jesus is. Is He both Messiah and God? And then, what do we believe about the church, and what Jesus wants to do through the church? Or better yet, what do we believe about what Jesus CAN do through the church, or what He WILL do through His church? Does Jesus still surprise His followers, and does He want to surprise the world through us? These are two separate things to consider:
A: Is Jesus still surprising His followers?
A: Is Jesus still surprising His followers?
Think about this for a moment: Are we still surprised by Jesus, or do we think we’ve got Him all figured out? For many of us guys, as we grew up we liked to take things apart to figure out how they worked. But once we understood them, they lost some of their mystique. Are we like this with Jesus, thinking that we have all the answers, and nothing that God does really surprises us any more? Do we come to passages like this one today and think, “OK, Jesus walked on water... Cool,” or are we just as shocked and awed as the disciples were on the middle of the Sea that night? Sure, Jesus isn’t physically here to walk on water in front of us to show us that He is Messiah and He is God. But we have the signs written down so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that by believing we may have life in His name, as John would write at the end of His gospel:
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
There’s one aspect of the sign of Jesus walking on the water that is included in only one of the accounts: The account of Peter walking on water with Jesus. Only Matthew’s gospel records this event. John didn’t record it likely because it wasn’t important to his purpose in writing: to show that Jesus is God and Messiah. Mark didn’t record it likely because Mark was writing Peter’s recollections, and while the narrative starts with Peter’s great confidence in Jesus, it ends in his abject failure. Maybe Peter wanted to leave that part out. Here’s what Matthew records, following Jesus’s instruction of “Have courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” in verse 27:
28 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter answered him, “command me to come to you on the water.” 29 He said, “Come.” And climbing out of the boat, Peter started walking on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the strength of the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me!” 31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand, caught hold of him, and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
What a surprise this must have been to Peter that Jesus actually said, “Come,” in response to his very bold and even rash request. What a surprise it must have been to Peter and the rest of the disciples when Peter got down out of the boat and started walking on water himself!
Unfortunately, Peter doesn’t keep his focus on Jesus, and instead looks around at the wind and the waves and panics. He doubts, and begins to sink, and Jesus has to rescue him from his doubt and get him back into the boat.
I think that sometimes we aren’t surprised by the work of Jesus because we really see it as our work. And we look at the size of what God wants to do in us and through us, and we decide that it can’t be done because we aren’t capable of doing it. This makes us like Peter: Jesus was already doing something incredibly surprising in Peter’s life, and would have continued doing it if Peter would have simply walked in faith and trusted Him to do so. But he looked at the size of what was happening and realized that in his own strength it was impossible, so he sank.
The question isn’t what we can do… it’s what God can do. And what is it that God can do? Look at what Paul said in Ephesians 3:
20 Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us—21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
God is able to do “above and beyond all that we ask or think,” by His power that works in us. What would it look like for us to walk in faith in the call we’ve been given, trusting in the power of Jesus to complete the work that He’s started in us? Do we believe that God wants to do God-sized things through us, or do we only believe that God wants us to do a whole bunch of us-sized things? And those things won’t just surprise us, but those things will also surprise the world.
B: Is Jesus still surprising the world (through us)?
B: Is Jesus still surprising the world (through us)?
By God’s sovereign plan of grace, we the church are called to be Jesus’s hands and feet in this world. We are called to be salt and light. We are called to be a city on a hill. We are called to walk in faith as God does God-sized, surprising things in us and through us, just like He did through Peter and John in Acts 3:
5 So he turned to them, expecting to get something from them. 6 But Peter said, “I don’t have silver or gold, but what I do have, I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk!” 7 Then, taking him by the right hand he raised him up, and at once his feet and ankles became strong. 8 So he jumped up and started to walk, and he entered the temple with them—walking, leaping, and praising God. 9 All the people saw him walking and praising God, 10 and they recognized that he was the one who used to sit and beg at the Beautiful Gate of the temple. So they were filled with awe and astonishment at what had happened to him.
Peter was the one who had taken His eyes off of Jesus and sank into the water. Peter was the one who Jesus had to rebuke, saying that he was more focused on human things instead of God’s things. Peter was the one who denied three times that he even knew Jesus on the night Jesus was arrested and tried. But now we discover Peter walking in the Spirit, listening to what God wants him to do, seeing awe-inspiring, astonishing works of God happen in his midst.
But that wasn’t all that was surprising. When Peter and John were questioned about this healing, Peter surprised the leaders of the Jews with his response:
7 After they had Peter and John stand before them, they began to question them: “By what power or in what name have you done this?” 8 Then Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders: 9 If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a disabled man, by what means he was healed, 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified and whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing here before you healthy. 11 This Jesus is the stone rejected by you builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.”
This isn’t the terrified Peter anymore. Peter has been radically changed because of His relationship of faith with the Lord Jesus. I want to quickly share three areas from Scripture where we can be the method that God uses to surprise the world: in our proclamation, our holiness, and our love.
i) Surprising by our proclamation
i) Surprising by our proclamation
First, we can surprise the world by our proclamation of the Gospel. This is what we see in Peter and John in Acts 4. The religious leaders heard Peter’s Spirit-empowered declaration of the Gospel of Jesus, and here is how they responded:
13 When they observed the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and recognized that they had been with Jesus.
They were amazed. What was different about these guys? Simple: they had been with Jesus. And what had Peter proclaimed? That Jesus died and rose again, and in doing so He had become the cornerstone of salvation for the world, and that salvation is found in no one else, because there is no other name by which we must be saved.
If you’re here today and you have never trusted in Jesus, it may surprise you to hear that Jesus is the only way to go to heaven. All roads don’t lead to salvation, regardless of how sincere you might be. Not doing good things. Not following any religion. Not being better than the next guy. Only through surrendering our lives to God by faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord are we saved. It’s giving up and saying, “I’m lost and I can’t save myself and I know it. Jesus, please save me.” It may surprise you to hear it this bluntly, but if you don’t belong to Jesus, your eternal destiny is hell because of our sins. Jesus died and rose again so that you and I could escape that destiny, and live forever with Him. Trust in Jesus for your salvation today.
Church, it is our place to surprise the world by proclaiming with passion and boldness that Jesus is Lord. This is the only proclamation that is truly going to change the world.
ii) Surprising by our holiness
ii) Surprising by our holiness
How we choose to live as believers can actually be something that God uses to surprise the world. But to be honest, Scripture here tells us that the world will respond to that surprise in a negative way, not a positive way. Peter wrote:
1 Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same understanding—because the one who suffers in the flesh is finished with sin—2 in order to live the remaining time in the flesh no longer for human desires, but for God’s will. 3 For there has already been enough time spent in doing what the Gentiles choose to do: carrying on in unrestrained behavior, evil desires, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and lawless idolatry. 4 They are surprised that you don’t join them in the same flood of wild living—and they slander you.
When we choose to live in such a way that we cling to God’s desires instead of human desires, we look different and strange to the world. When we look different and strange, then we surprise the world that we don’t go along with them. And it seems lately that many in the world assume that if we don’t agree with them, then we hate them. So we are slandered and given all kinds of labels that aren’t actually true. We will be hated if we go against the grain of the world. In fact, John wrote that the hatred of the world that we receive is something that SHOULDN’T surprise us:
13 Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.
If the world just thinks highly of us all the time, then perhaps we aren’t living the way we should live, because the world must not see any difference. We can surprise the world by walking in holiness. Last note on this: this doesn’t mean that we beat the lost over the head with our holiness. We just live in holiness and proclaim the Gospel, both from a place of love, which is the last way we can surprise the world:
iii) Surprising by our love, both for one another and for them.
iii) Surprising by our love, both for one another and for them.
Finally, we can surprise the world by showing them the love of God both in how we love one another in the church, and how we actively love those outside of the family of God. Paul prayed for the church at Thessalonica:
12 And may the Lord cause you to increase and overflow with love for one another and for everyone, just as we do for you.
Paul’s desire for that church, and for us by extension, is that they would increase and overflow in love, both for one another and for everyone. We are usually pretty good about loving one another. But we are often less good at loving “everyone” else. And it’s the active nature of our love that’s really going to surprise the world.
Jesus said in John 13 that everyone will know that we belong to Him if we love one another. And later, John wrote in his first epistle:
18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth.
We can surprise the world, church, by showing people the love of Christ in active, tangible, practical ways, while we share with them the hope of the Gospel that compels us to love them well.
Closing
Closing
So Jesus surprised His disciples and the world when He walked on water, and we should still expect Him to do surprising things in and through us by the power of His Spirit here and now. He’s not done surprising the world, and He plans to use us to do so. But ultimately, the biggest surprise will be when Jesus comes back to set the world right. Paul wrote of it like this to the Thessalonians:
2 For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. 3 When they say, “Peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you, brothers and sisters, are not in the dark, for this day to surprise you like a thief. 5 For you are all children of light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or the darkness. 6 So then, let us not sleep, like the rest, but let us stay awake and be self-controlled. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled and put on the armor of faith and love, and a helmet of the hope of salvation.
Brothers and sisters, the return of Jesus will be a surprise, but one that we should live in expectant anticipation of, unlike the disciples in the boat that night. And since that’s the case, we are to be ready, and at work sharing the hope of the Gospel so that others will be ready as well.
Invitation to trust Christ
Church membership
Other things
Offering
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
No Pastor’s Bible Study tonight
Vivian Wootres Memorial next Saturday at 10 am.
Harold & Cathy Smith 50th Wedding Anniversary party next Saturday at 1 pm.
Bible reading: Luke 12 today
Father’s Day gift for all guys.
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
12 Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you, as if something unusual were happening to you. 13 Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are ridiculed for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.
As Joe has said the past couple of time he’s preached, we are not dismissed: we are sent. Let’s go and surprise the world.