Sermon Tone Analysis

Date: 2022-06-19

Audience: Grass Valley Corps ONLINE

Title: The Evil Beneath Your Feet

Text: Matthew 14:23-38

Proposition: Jesus is revealed as divine

Purpose: Stop treating him like he’s magic

Grace and peace to you!

Captain Roger – TSA-Grass Valley – Online worship is study time.

The time each week we come together to spend a few minutes learning something about what the Bible has to say, why we might care, and what – if anything – we should do about it.

This week: Matthew, chapter 14, looking at a story that everyone knows, some people believe, and most people completely miss the story of what’s really going on and why it might be important.

I say that everyone knows the story – should say everyone knows the BEGINNING of the story.

I suspect many Christians and even many preachers couldn’t say that they KNOW the second part.

You find Matthew 14 in your Bibles while I tell you a different story.

In ancient days, water was said to have mysterious properties.

It was known to be a blessing, lakes and seas providing fish to eat and faster travel than on land.

It could be peaceful to sit and watch the waves.

It could, in places, provide water to drink and to irrigate your crops.

But it could also make you ill.

It could swell the banks of rivers until they burst, great floods leveling everything downstream, sometimes for miles.

In some waters, people at the fish, but in others it seemed that fish ate the people!

And no one could spend more than a few minutes in the water before needing to come up for air, which made it an eerie and unknown world even more remote than the most distant land.

When the Canaanites had ruled the lands which would become Northern Israel, Baal, their god of storms, was said to live on the lake which would become known as the Sea of Galilee.

He would stand in its waters and battle other gods, using the wind, lightning, and waves at his command to lash at them and defeat them, sending them into the depths as a gateway to the underworld.

For sailors, there was a fear of drowning.

A belief had risen up which said souls lost in the seas would remain trapped there until the end of time, separated from the rest of their kind.

Waters were a place of chaos – uncontrollable, unpredictable.

Some said that God had imprisoned rebellious angels in the depths, deep in the abyss, and that they were trapped there, waiting for humans to come within reach so they could be pulled down to their doom or so that they could be entered and possessed, perhaps as a way to escape their prison for a time.

When Jesus cast demons from one possessed man, they begged to be permitted to enter a herd of pigs instead of being cast into the abyss and Jesus allowed it, but the pigs rushed immediately into the sea, drowning themselves and, presumably, returning the spirit creatures to their watery prison.

Alongside the Sea of Galilee, we have seen Jesus preach and teach.

Some of his followers were fishermen to whom this sea was a second home.

We don’t know if they had any superstitions or haunting beliefs about the abyss they sailed on most every day, but we do know they had a healthy respect for its power.

In Matthew 14, leading up to verse 22, we saw that Jesus had some of his people sail him across the lake to escape the crowds, but the crowds had followed, racing around the lake, emptying village after village on their way as others came to see this wilderness preacher who had captivated the world with his teaching and miracles of healing.

And Jesus had taken pity on them and taught them and healed their sick and fed them a miraculously large meal using nothing but a handful of dinner rolls and fish jerky.

Now that they have eaten, everyone having had his fill, Jesus had his disciples gather up the leftovers and then this, from Matthew 14:22:

22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd.[1]

So they sailed off, heading for the far side of the lake, while Jesus told people to go home.

Where did he go?

23 After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray.

Later that night, he was there alone, 24 and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

[2]

Jesus finally got the alone time he had been looking for that morning – space away from the crowds.

And, for him, that means time with God, praying, listening…

When he was done, it was late.

Well past midnight.

It was dark, much of the night gone by, and the boat his disciples had crowded into was invisible in the clouds and waves which had been blown in by a strong and choppy wind dancing across the lake like an evil storm god.

We’re told that:

25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.[3]

Which is, of course, not the sort of thing one expects to hear.

But, where Jesus is concerned, we’ve started to get used to hearing things that seem crazy, haven’t we?

I wonder what that was like?

Was he just walking, like you would walk across the surface of a shallow puddle or a wet sidewalk?

Or was it more like skating, with those long, sweeping slides on each foot?

Was it faster than a normal stroll?

Slower?

However, it must have taken some time.

The boat was miles out, halfway across or more, sailing into a headwind, and the Greek describes it literally as the boat was being tortured by the waves.

Jesus is walking towards them during the Fourth Watch, that period between 3 and 6 am when everything is shifting shadows that make the darkness look deeper and more ominous even though dawn is just over the horizon.

But the men in the boat wouldn’t have expected that, would they?

They left Jesus behind, thinking he would take another boat or perhaps walk around the lake and catch up to them later.

The men sailing this vessel knew the lake and its tricks, even in the dark.

They knew how to tack into the wind, to work their way slowly into it, making ground yard by grueling yard as they fought to keep moving forward while the icy blow pushed them back and the waves of the abyss tried to climb over their bow and drown them or at least beat them into submission, forcing them to retreat.

They probably kept looking to the horizon, hoping to see some sign of dawn breaking.

A light on the horizon to give them something to see other than moving blobs of shapeless night.

Something that would let them know that the sun would come up and warm the air and change the patterns of the wind that was trying to defeat them.

But instead of the rising sun, all they could make out was a twist of black shadow to the east.

It could have been a wave, but was fixed a ways off from the boat to the east.

The next series of waves broke over them, slapping them hard against the surface of the water, making them squeeze their eyes shut to clear water from them before blinking open again.

But there, centered to the east, that shadow was still there, closer now, seeming somehow to be more than just some debris .

As the sky lightened imperceptibly and the sailors braced themselves/s for the next spray of water and wind.

This time, too, that shape was nearer: Each wave which broke over them seemed to bring it closer, a spot of darkness on a shadow wrapped in waves which, as it neared, began to look like it was something and not the nothing it should be, but what?

As it grew nearer, visible and yet not able to be seen, the stories of the sea began to poke in through their tired minds.

Souls trapped in the abyss.

Evil night spirits which came, mean and malignant, to wreak havoc on mortal lives.

Another wave and the wind tried to blow the breath from their bodies as the shadow grew again, almost stalking towards them.

It almost seemed human-like in form, not quite visible, not quite invisible… What could it be?

And in the darkness, through their exhaustion and fear, a single thought came to them – one that could not possibly be true and yet one which crept into their souls and blew up as big as the sky.

It’s a man, no, a monster of some kind, no it’s crossing the surface of the lake, as sure and as steady as death it was trying to get to them, moving faster than they could, almost as if it was something intangible or unstoppable.

Something like…

And Matthew tells us the thought that cut into their hearts as they saw this dark shape coming closer:

26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified.

“It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.

[4]

Which was a stupid thing to say, because it could not be a ghost.

They had been taught by uncounted generations of stories that ghosts could not cross certain barriers, one of which was moving water like a river or a sea.

Ghosts sank when they tried to enter even shallow waters; sank and disappeared, destroyed, drowned no longer a threat.

A ghost? Absurd!

But their fear was real and their thinking confused and they were frightened out of their minds.

And a voice came to them across the waters and the waves, one that could not be there, could not be, but which spoke reassurance to them:

27 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage!

It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

[5]

“It is I?” That’s a good translation, rendered into a plain English sentence.

But what he really said was simply, “I am.”

And in that simple statement there is a whole world of meaning bound up for them to hear and for us to understand, but at the moment there was something else happening which wrenched their attention away from the words to another thing entirely.

28 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

[6]

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

But disciples were to be like their masters, weren’t they?

And they had seen Jesus teach and he had sent them to teach.

They had seen him heal people with a touch and a prayer, and he had sent them to do the same.

They has seem him command supernatural beings to come out of their human hosts, to release their captive bodies and spirits, and Jesus had sent them to do the same, AND THEY HAD!

Lord, Peter said, if that’s really you out there, standing on the waves, striding across the surface of the abyss without sinking, tell me to do that too!

I want to do that!

29 “Come,” [Jesus] said.