Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: John 6:16-21

N:

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

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

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:

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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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:

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:”

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.