I AM In Plain Sight - [Mark 6:45-52]

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Andrew Smith Preaches I AM In Plain Sight - [Mark 6:45-52]

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the
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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes, as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her
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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Well, those of you who know me know that I'm a pretty big baseball fan.
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I like baseball. And some years ago, I got the chance to go on a tour of Fenway Park, anything to get more money, right?
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It's a guided tour, where they bring you around the stadium, they bring you around the park, and they show you interesting things.
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They tell you stories about parts of the ballpark, or something that happened here, or whatever the thing might be.
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And as we're walking through the empty stand, this is of course not during a game, we come around the first base side, and we're standing there in the loge box, which is like Latin for you can't afford these seats, or something like that.
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So we come around, and the guide points at the green monster. If you don't know what the green monster is,
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I might have to take away your Massachusetts card, but he points at the green monster, and he points at the scoreboard, and he says, what do you see?
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I'm looking, I'm like, well, the Yankees are up three games in the division, the Baltimore Orioles are doing what the
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Baltimore Orioles do, you know, it's not looking so great. And he says, no, no, no, no. He says, look at the lines.
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Look at the white lines on the scoreboard. And you can do this, by the way, when you go home, if you want to. He said, look at the vertical white lines, and you'll see something interesting.
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You'll look really close, like, oh, there's dots and lines, green dots and lines inside the white lines.
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Well, that's kind of neat. OK, what's that? It turns out there's Morse code written in the white lines of the green monster.
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And it's Morse code, it's cool. Some people went, whoa, what? Hopefully that's not the most amazing thing you hear today.
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It's the initials of Tom and Gene Yawkey, who were probably the most well -known owners of the Boston Red Sox. It's kind of like an homage to them, let alone fact.
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They spelled them wrong once, they've fixed them now, whatever. But if you pay attention, you'll see it. And these kind of things you see literally all over the place in our modern culture.
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The FedEx arrow, if you ever look at the FedEx logo, you'll see the FedEx arrow. Now you will never unsee the
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FedEx arrow, I'm sorry. Baskin -Robbins has the 31 inside the logo for Baskin -Robbins.
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This one I learned about, I googled a couple of these, because that's what you do. The Toyota logo is set up so that if you look at the ovals in the
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Toyota logo, it says all of the letters of Toyota. I thought that was cool. That's kind of a neat thing.
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Back to baseball, perhaps the best logo in the major leagues was the 1978 throwback logo to the
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Milwaukee Brewers. Take a look at that one. This one has the M and the B in the bat and the glove. Why am
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I talking about baseball? I don't know. The early ministry of Jesus Christ is filled with these kinds of pictures as well.
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Jesus performed miracle after miracle, and the truth of who he was could not be denied.
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Now, if you remember a couple of months ago when I had the opportunity to preach here, we studied a passage that should have left the disciples dumbfounded and impressed and maybe feeling a little bit foolish after they doubted the provision of the
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Lord Jesus Christ when he fed the 5 ,000 men. If you'll turn with me in your
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Bibles to the book of Mark, which is where we're going to be this morning, chapter 6, we're going to start in verse 45.
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This is a passage that I guarantee you you've seen this before. In fact, this is something that Jesus did that was so famous that even people who have never read a
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Bible before make reference to this very thing. Mark 6, verses 45 to 52, immediately he,
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Jesus, made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd.
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And after he'd taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea and he was alone on the land.
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And he saw that they were making headway painfully for the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea.
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He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and they cried out, but they all saw him and were terrified.
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But immediately he spoke to them and said, take heart, it is I do not be afraid. And he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased and they were utterly astounded for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.
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So what's going on here? Where are we? This is this is Mark chapter six. At the beginning of Mark six, Jesus sends out his disciples for the expansion of Jesus' great
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Galilean ministry. He sends them out to further his mission to proclaim that people should repent. Chapter six, verse 12.
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And so they went out two by two because Jesus approves of the buddy system. And as they did what
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Jesus commanded them to do, some scholars say they were out there for maybe a year, 18 months. It was a long time.
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It's not like they went out for a weekend, you know, and came back. But eventually they do all come back.
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They've gone on their mission. They've accomplished the goal for which they've been sent out and they're tired. They need to relax.
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They need to refresh. So Jesus does what any good leader would do. And he says, let's get away.
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Let's go somewhere where there are no people, where we don't have to be bothered. We'll relax.
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We'll get rejuvenated. Right. So they leave from the home base, which is Capernaum at this time, right on the
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Sea of Galilee. And they head on in a boat towards some desolate place, it says in the text. But the people see them leave.
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They're celebrities at this point. The disciples have all gone around and they've been preaching and teaching and healing and casting out demons and doing all of these things.
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And they're gathering crowds, just like the crowds that we see that are following Jesus all over the place. Now the disciples have people following them.
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And so they've all come back to Capernaum and the crowds are there. They see Jesus and the disciples get into a boat and try to leave.
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And so they follow along on the shore. Sea of Galilee is not a big sea. It's more like a giant lake, really.
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It's maybe five miles across. So they're not in a sailboat. They're rowing. And so they need to stay within sight of the shore to have a sense of where they are.
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And so the people that see them leave, they follow along. They're on the shore. They're kind of watching. You know, maybe they've got somebody who's keeping an eye on them to make sure they're in the right place.
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And the whole crowd is going along on the shoreline. So Jesus and the disciples, seeing these people, they eventually dock their boat and Jesus does what
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Jesus does. And he returns to his mission. He resumes his mission. He preaches and he teaches to the crowd that has followed them all this way, all day long.
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And that evening, we see the incredible miracle that I already referenced, Jesus feeding the 5 ,000.
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And that brings us to where we are today, verse 45, a little bit of context for our passage this morning.
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Jesus' deity is the point of this passage. And I hope today to show you that in a way that you have never seen or realized before.
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We're going to see five individual moments in our passage, each one displaying the sovereignty of Jesus Christ.
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And I did put this passage through the Steve Cooley approved Baptist point generator.
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So we have alliteration. Don't worry. We're going to make it. If you're taking notes, these all begin with the letter
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R. So the first event that we see here in our text starts in verse 45.
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This is the retreat, the retreat in verses 45 and 46. Immediately, he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side to Bethsaida while he dismissed the crowd.
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And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. Jesus feeds the crowds.
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He sends the disciples out to gather the excess so that it is not wasted. And at this point, the disciples job is done before even dismissing the crowd.
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Jesus sends the disciples away. And there's so many possible reasons why this could have been the case.
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Throughout the early chapters of this book, Jesus is serving and he's performing so many miracles that it gets to the point where in chapter one, he couldn't even enter cities because of the crowds that were waiting for him.
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People were so desperate to get to him. In chapter two, that they were tearing the roofs off of buildings. His own family thought that he was doing so much for other people that he was crazy.
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In chapter three, and on and on and on it goes. And just like when
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Jesus got off the boat in verse 34, he put the needs of his disciples ahead of the needs of his own.
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He put he felt compassion on the people. He served the people. And here he puts the disciples ahead of himself.
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You go without me. I'll take care of this. We almost see this in movies, right? It's almost a sad moment. Oh, you go without me.
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I'll hold the line. Right. But here it is not a sad moment because Jesus is God. If I'm here, they won't follow you.
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Go. Sot writes that making his disciples go on ahead shows Jesus determination to provide the rest for his disciples, which he intended.
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That's his goal here. But we see another perspective in the
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Johannine narrative. In John chapter six, we see the same event. But we see a little bit more.
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We see the response of the crowd after Jesus has miraculously provided for this huge crowd of people, 5000 men, probably up to 10 ,000 people.
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When you include women and children, all of these people have seen this incredible thing that Jesus has done. And this is their response.
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John chapter six, verses 14 and 15. When the people saw the signs that he had done, they said this.
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This is indeed the prophet who has come into the world, perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king.
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Jesus withdrew again to the mountain himself. By himself. So close yet so far away.
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These people, these Jews, these people coming to hear the teaching of Jesus Christ, they have identified
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Jesus as the promised one. They're not wrong in that they connected Jesus to the provision of bread from God for Israel for 40 years.
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But they didn't quite get it. They didn't quite understand. They didn't see that Jesus was not a messianic militaristic king, as we'll see again later.
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And honestly, the disciples, as we're going to continue to come up against over and over again, they still didn't quite get it either.
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They were starting to understand who Jesus was. Remember, I mean, he delegated his power to them.
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They went out on this ministry to expand the Galilean ministry. And they were performing these things, these miraculous acts.
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It was Jesus' power that was allowing them to do so. So they've seen this. They know
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Jesus better than anybody in the crowd. They don't still get it. They perhaps could have been caught up in the swell of 10 ,000 people proclaiming
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Jesus as Messiah, as king, but not as the king that we know him to be, but as a king that would kick the
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Romans out of Israel. So in order to also make sure that these disciples are not swayed by the crowd, he dismisses the disciples to leave by boat before he dismisses the crowds, before he deals with all of this feedback from the crowds.
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And so we see the sovereignty of Jesus Christ recognized here, if incorrectly, by the crowds in verses 45 and 46, and in this passage in John.
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This is our first R. This is the retreat. Next, we see
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Jesus' deity made manifest in the rescue in verses 47 and 48, the rescue.
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And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them.
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And about the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea. So here's what
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Jesus didn't do, right? He didn't go up on the mountain. He didn't kneel down, say a few words, put, you know, his words in the prayer envelope, put the in your name kind of sticker on the outside and mail it off.
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That wasn't what he did, right? We have this picture in our head that that's the way that you have to pray. We've got this kind of construction. You've got to put the stamp that says in your name
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I pray, and then you can mail it to God. That's not what Jesus did here, right? This is a deep communion with his father.
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This lasted for hours. He started in the evening. And then when he stops, it's the fourth watch of the night when he comes down off the mountain.
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So he looks out on the sea where he has sent the disciples, three or four miles away.
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It's the middle of the night. He didn't have his night vision goggles, you know, this is a divine vision.
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This is his ability as God to see his people. Now, I found myself studying a 40 -year -old research paper on the winds of the
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Sea of Galilee yesterday, and I started to wonder if maybe I was getting a little bit too deep. But I do think this is interesting.
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The Sea of Galilee has an exceptional wind system, according to researchers. In the morning, due to the geography of the area, in the morning, a lake breeze develops blowing toward the shores of the lake.
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Okay, so from the middle of the lake out towards the shores, right? You almost think of this as a tide, but we're talking about wind here.
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But late at night, a wind flow develops from the land toward the lake. So now, the wind is blowing from the land into the lake.
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So if you're trying to go from east to west, those winds are going to push you, and you're near the north shore, those winds are going to push you south.
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Right? If you're in the middle of the lake, those winds are going to push you away from the shore. And that's exactly what was happening here.
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This is what the disciples are fighting against. They just want to get to land, right? They got out there when it was hard, and now they're stuck in the middle of the ocean, and they're in the middle of the sea, and they can't get anywhere.
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And they're fighting, and they're fighting. I was thinking of Pastor Mike's stories about trying to swim back from Alcatraz, and how you can't swim towards your destination, you have to swim up because it's going to pull you down.
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You're not here, but I'm still going to bring your term illustrations. Is that okay? That's okay? Okay. All right. But that's what's happening here.
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And so they're pushed south, and they're rowing, and they're rowing, and they're trying, and it's been hours, and hours, and hours, right?
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This is miserable. The same word that we see here for straining is translated elsewhere as torment, right?
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This is not a jaunty little trip on the ocean, on the sea here. But we see, again, we see the compassion of the
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Savior coming to the surface, and this time it's the surface of the water. And so about the fourth watch of the night, which is like three to six in the morning, okay?
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This is not a time that any of us should be awake, I think. The disciples are exhausted.
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They're harried. They're worried about their ability to even make it to the other side. It's dark.
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It's miserable. There's a storm going on. And so Jesus comes to them.
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This here is the rescue. Now, many people have tried to kind of explain what's happening.
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Or Jesus is walking on a sandbar, or he's walking on an area of the shore that happens to be close to where they are.
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There's some kind of optical illusion. Or maybe he's God. I mentioned it's a storm, right?
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Sometimes I see pictures of, you know, beautiful oil paintings or whatever, these paintings that people paint of Jesus doing this or that.
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You know, and he's always, everything is still and calm in these pictures.
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And I understand that they're trying to evoke this kind of emotion of calmness when we're in the sight of God.
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But Jesus was not walking on like a flat lake. When we go to Lake Denison, sometimes we get up in the morning and you go out and you look and the lake is like a mirror.
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It's like flat. Anybody know what I'm talking about here? Yeah. The Sea of Galilee was not like that.
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This is in the middle of a storm. Even if you could walk on water, I don't know if you could kind of skip along.
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I don't know what you would do. Even if you could do that in this situation, it would be way, way harder. It's clear that Jesus' purpose here was, however he intended to do it, to help these men.
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But we see something weird at the end of verse 48. If I were trying to argue with myself,
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I would say, you mean to tell me that Jesus is going to go out and rescue these men, but here it says he meant to pass by them.
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Well, that's not very helpful. Is that like a nanny nanny boo boo? I can get past you and you can't move on.
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Like what's happening? What's going on? And it's here. It's here in this part of the rescue that we see our second glimpse of the deity of Jesus Christ.
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Throughout scripture, mostly in the Old Testament, we see many examples of God showing himself to mankind in some way.
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What are these called? Anybody know? Theophanies. The Bible college guy knew it.
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Theophanies. These are theophanies, right? The most well -known of these would be the burning bush theophany or of God appearing to Abraham as a smoking oven or as a burning torch or of God hiding
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Moses in the cleft of the rock so that he could do what? Pass by him.
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R .C. Sproul, Dr. Sproul writes, that is what happened on the Sea of Galilee.
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Jesus self -consciously made himself a theophany. The glory of God bursting through the shroud of the humanity of Jesus was made manifest to the disciples.
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In the middle of their distress, they looked up and saw the glory of God passing by, the glory of the
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Lord shining out of the Son of God. So lest we look at this and think, oh, he was just going to go by, maybe meet him on the other side, be like, oh,
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I'm just fine. Where have you been? You know, it's nothing like that. Jesus had every intention for the men in this boat to see him.
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Lane writes that it may be more appropriate for this text to be translated for he intended to pass their way.
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You ever have a conversation with someone? Oh, well, you know what? I'm going to pass your way, so I'll drop something off, that kind of idea.
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Jesus intended to pass their way, right? This idea of passing by seems weird because it's not the intention of the writer to imply that he was just going to kind of walk by and move on with his life.
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That's not the point. Jesus' presence in the sight of these men was 100 % intentional.
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But sure, it goes further, and he calls this divine theophany a sign for the 12.
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This is a sign of who God is dedicated to these 12 men.
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So we've seen the retreat, we've seen the rescue, and now we see the reaction, the reaction versus 49 and 50.
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He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out.
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But they all saw him and were terrified, but immediately he spoke to them and said, take heart, it is
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I, do not be afraid. It's just me, it's Jesus. Again, these men are super tired.
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They're exhausted. They've been doing this for a long time. They've been doing this for hours. They are just wearied from fighting these elements.
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And then they see someone on the water walking toward them, and they kind of freak out, right?
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This doesn't make sense. People can't walk on water. The word ghost here, you recognize this one, phantasma.
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Phantasma, we recognize that, phantasm. They rightly identified this theophany as supernatural.
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We're not playing horseshoes here, guys. You can't get close. You have to understand what's going on. They were wrong about its source.
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The word can also be translated demon, and certainly these men had seen many demons over the course of their ministry.
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And it's not just shock that they have. It's not like some jump scare in some movie that you probably shouldn't be watching.
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It's not like, whoa, loud music or something like that. Just shock, oh, OK, everything's fine. No, the word here is used to refer to being deeply troubled.
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Let not your heart be troubled, same word. It's this idea, it's not surprised. It is a deep fear.
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And if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. They're in a rowboat. They're probably a nice rowboat, but they're in a rowboat.
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And so if you're in a rowboat, who here has ever been in a rowboat? Who here has ever been at the oars of a rowboat? OK, good. If you're in a rowboat, are you facing the way you're going if you're pulling those oars?
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No, you're facing in the other direction. I mean, if you're paddling in a canoe or a kayak, you get to face where you're going. But if you're in a rowboat, you're pulling, you're pulling, you're looking back the way you came.
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And that's where Jesus is coming from. He's not doing an end round around them. He's walking directly at them. And so the men who are exhausted from rowing see
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Jesus. And it's not like they just see him and he's right in front of them. They see something coming.
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He's getting closer, getting closer. That's it. I can understand how this might be a little bit eerie, but as he gets closer and closer and closer, that fear grows.
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That trembling grows. They get more nervous. The fear had time to build up, right?
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And it wasn't going away until, that fear wasn't going away until the great comforter spoke the words that would relax them.
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He spoke to them and said, take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.
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ESV says, be of good cheer. This isn't a cause for concern, but it's a cause for joy. Your master has returned to you.
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This man who sent you on your way has come back. Hendrickson writes that when Jesus spoke the words, take courage.
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It is I. Do not be afraid. He must have momentarily shocked his disciples, but the immediate shock became a tremendously glad surprise.
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Jesus is with us. So we've seen the retreat. Jesus' incredible capacity to put others before himself.
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Jesus, determined to extricate his disciples from the crowd, sends them on ahead while he handles the people.
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We saw their identification of Jesus as Messiah, the crowd's identification of Jesus as Messiah, which was correct, although they wanted a different type of Messiah.
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Then we saw the rescue. Jesus seeing his disciples in peril supernaturally and coming to them, even by performing this incredible miracle of walking on the water.
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And then we saw here the reaction, these wearied, tired men seeing what seemed like a ghost, what seemed like a phantom coming toward them across the water.
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It must have seemed like he was floating across the water, right? Not worried at all about the storm that's blowing all around him, just proceeding toward them calmly, gripped with terror.
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They cried out only to be comforted by their Lord. And that brings us to the reveal.
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Verses 50 and 51. We've already seen
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Jesus' response to the cries from his disciples. He comforted them, right? That is what he does when his people are in distress.
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But if we look even more closely, we're going to see just how profound this greeting is.
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The disciples' reaction to the sight of Jesus Christ called for self -revelation. They didn't know who or what it was that they were seeing.
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And have you ever tried to harmonize the Gospels? A lot of times you look at them and you're like, well, this word's a little bit different.
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You know, this guy's writing it a little bit differently. We know that this is all the word of God. It is God -breathed, but different people have different styles of writing, right?
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It just happens. And so here in this passage, it's remarkable to note that what
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Jesus says is almost identical in all three passages where we see it.
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John omits the initial, don't worry, take heart. But the rest of this is identical, even in the
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Greek. Imagine that. Words are important. And that's why this matters. When Jesus self -identifies, what we read is it is
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I, right? We say, oh, it's OK. It's OK. It's me. Don't worry. It's Jesus. I'm here. Don't worry. Jesus uses the phrase ego emi in the
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Greek. This phrase appears 67 times in the New Testament.
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Most of it is in the Gospel of John. It appears over 100 times in the Septuagint, which is the
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Greek translation of the Old Testament. And it translates into not, hey, don't worry,
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I'm here, but I am. All three of these narratives exactly the same.
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I am. Take heart. I am. Dr. Sproul writes, this is an intensive form of I am.
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It is also an expression that translates the ineffable name of God that God gave to Moses from the burning bush.
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I am who I am. If there was any doubt that this was a theophany,
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Jesus use of the sacred name of God to identify himself as he walked on the water made it virtually certain.
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These men cry out, I am. It's easy for us to see a passage like this and the glory and the amazement of, oh,
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Jesus is walking on water. How cool is this? And miss this. It's so I mean, the miracle of walking on water.
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I mean, that's pretty cool. But although he has made the declaration before, it is no less wondrous, no less amazing.
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And one might even argue even more incredible than the fact that he walked on water to get there. He declared, it is
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I, the eternal, infinite God, and I am here for you. That's what he said.
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Now, I mentioned John. I mentioned looking at John chapter six to see our harmony here. But but here I'd like you to turn to Matthew, Matthew 14.
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If you don't already have your finger in there, or maybe keep your finger in Mark as we take a quick look at Matthew 14 for a short interlude that we don't see in the other
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Gospels. Matthew 14, starting in verse 28. This comes immediately after Jesus says,
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I am. Do not be afraid. Matthew 14, 28. And Peter answered him, Lord, if it is you command me to come to you on the water.
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He said, come. So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, beginning to sink.
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He cried out, Lord, save me. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying, oh, you of little faith.
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Why did you doubt? Why did you doubt? This is our friend
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Peter. I've been spending a lot of time in the book of Mark, Mark being the memoirs of Peter.
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And he was a character, always the brash one, always the first one to pipe up during events like the transfiguration.
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He said, oh, let me make tabernacles for you and for Moses and for Elijah. Right. But but of course, that was foolish.
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She he would never deny Jesus three times. No way. That would never be Peter. Peter jumps up.
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He's so excited to see Jesus. It's you. This is awesome.
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MacArthur writes he Peter knew Jesus had the power to enable him to walk on the water, but he did not presume to attempt the feat without his express instruction.
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Not a bad thought. Peter's request was an act of affection built on confident faith.
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He did not ask to walk on water for the sake of doing something spectacular, but because it was a way for him to get to Jesus.
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As it made plain later in the gospel, the disciples have kind of a bad habit of thinking that their faith and their power generates within themselves.
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They argue about which one of them is greater, you know, these kinds of things. They find they can't heal because their faith is in the wrong place.
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One commentator made a really interesting observation of this when he said that our journey to God is impossibly far.
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If it rests on our faith generated by ourselves, we will never make it.
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But as we rest in and rely on him, Jesus Christ, we are with him instantly. And that's what we see in this passage.
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Peter's faith wavers when he steps out of the boat. He's nervous. He's scared.
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He fails to trust Jesus Christ and the difference between them. He's not going to make it. He's not going to make it.
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But God instantly reaches out his hand and he's there. He's with Peter in distress.
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We see the failure of Peter's faith in verse 31 after Jesus takes hold of him. What's the failure? His faith is small, little faith.
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You doubt. I mean, we look at this and this happens all the time.
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We look at the disciples and we're like, oh, Jesus is right there. What are you doing? But we do doubt every day.
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Why? Why do we doubt? Because of exactly the same issue, we fail to keep our eyes and our faith fixed on Christ.
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We fail to keep our eyes on this righteous one who, when walking across this tumultuous ocean, this tumultuous sea in the dead of night, is calm and in control.
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We do the exact same things every time we see the disciples and look down our long noses at them. We do the same stuff.
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So after this, Jesus returns to the boat with Peter and just like before, in Mark chapter 4, the winds instantly stop.
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Right? Just like before, the boat was being rocked. They thought they were going to die.
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Before Jesus was asleep in the boat, this time he steps into the boat and immediately the winds stop. Even the winds and the seas obey
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Jesus Christ. Now, you might think that they would see this and they'd say,
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He did it again. He did it again. Nope.
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They are utterly dumbfounded. The text says utterly astounded. They continue to marvel in Jesus Christ.
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But why are the disciples so thick? What is up? Why is it that they can't figure this out?
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Thankfully, Mark actually explains that to us. We've seen the retreat.
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We've seen the rescue. We looked at the reaction of the disciples and we've just seen
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Jesus Christ reveal himself to them. And then as we continue to ask this question, why, why, why, why can't these guys figure this out?
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We see the reason in verse 52. The reason. They were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.
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And we've seen Jesus do incredible things. Throughout the entire corpus of the ministry of Jesus Christ, he doesn't grow in his supernatural power.
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He always has it. And so anything that we see later, he could have done beforehand. It doesn't matter. He could have seen them on the ocean and,
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I don't know, made them all wake up on the shore the next day. He could have done that. Sure. Why not? But no, he walks out on the water to them.
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He meets them. He shows them a sign and then he comes into the boat with them because the disciples needed to see this.
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Stott writes that the experience of any one of these miracles ought to, by now, to be for them an avenue for perceiving that the one with whom they are dealing,
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Jesus, their teacher, is endowed with the kind of power they normally expect only of the God revealed in their scriptures.
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Yet they still treat each miraculous event as if it is self -contained. In so far as they ascribe it to Jesus, they have not yet learned to look within and behind him to discern the source, a perception which will at once open their eyes to who
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Jesus is. You want to know why they don't get it? This is the chord of their failure.
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When Mark writes that their hearts were hardened, it is an indication of the confusion of the disciples. This is why they don't get it.
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They don't understand who he is. They can't draw conclusions that they ought to from the miracles of Jesus Christ.
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As Luther said, by the example of the feeding of the 5 ,000, they should have been made so strong in the faith to have not been terrified by an apparition.
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I have had the privilege of being able to text a little bit with Mike over the last couple of months.
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And I've shared this with some of you. I have been amazed at how strong Mike's faith is.
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We get an email from Luke. We hear something like, oh, you know, it's been a bad day, whatever.
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You wouldn't really know it from Mike's texts. Always glorifying God, always saying, you know what, whatever happens is fine.
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His will be done. That kind of peace, that kind of contentment, that kind of willingness to let the plan of God proceed, that is an incredible faith.
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And that's a faith that the disciples don't have yet. Matthew does kind of imply some recognition here, but it's fleeting.
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The disciples say, truly you, Jesus, are the Son of God. They say that to him. But they don't live it.
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They don't continue to believe this. They don't continue to hold on to that. Now, academically,
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Mark's description gives us some insight. He reminds us that miracles that we see and the reactions to those miracles give us insight into other events.
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Had they understood what happened with the loaves and they considered the source of that, they would have had better insight into the deity of Jesus Christ.
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And this event wouldn't have shocked them quite so much. It also reminds us that these men aren't dumb.
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Am I allowed to say that? Dumb? Is that okay? These men are not dumb. Their obtuseness is a function of their heart condition, not of their intelligence.
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They can't believe until they are made able to. They haven't received saving faith yet, and their misunderstanding reflects not inability, intellectual inability, but unbelief.
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So that's what we see in this passage, these five R's that we see in this passage, Jesus walking on the water.
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God works miracles. We see that here. But what he doesn't do is drop into our lives at various points and in various ways to kind of work some kind of miracle, and then he's off to the next thing.
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I don't know if you watch the Marvel movies. If you watch the Marvel movies, you wonder where's Captain Marvel during this whole thing, right?
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Like, maybe she could help out, but she doesn't. That's not what God is like, because he is always with us.
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That wasn't in my notes. Jesus, God, is a present loving savior who provides for us more than we can possibly imagine.
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Every good and perfect gift is from where? From above, James chapter 1.
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There is a continuity to the work of God in our lives. We use language like the weaving of a tapestry.
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When we look at all the things that God has done for all of his people. And we use this language because it helps us to see the working of God in a way that these disciples could not.
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That doesn't mean we're any better than these men. We still fail. We still need to call out for help from God, because our faith is not big enough.
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Our faith is not strong enough. Pastor Steve has said this many times, and he's right when he says that ultimately the core of every sin is what?
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Unbelief. Our faith is not strong enough. Our failure to believe that God will provide for us, and God will give us everything we need, is all we need, is the only thing that we need to lean on, and yet when we fail to recognize that, it provokes so many errors in our judgment.
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Well, we want something, so we kind of take it, even if we shouldn't. So that is our passage today, but as we draw to a close,
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I'm going to give you two more R's. These R's are two things that you can apply to your lives every day that will help you fill in these gaps, these gaps that the disciples failed so much to fill in on their own at this point.
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As you see points in time where God has clearly worked in your life, you need not be governed by, what has he done for me lately?
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Remember, it is the direction of your life. So the first one of these
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R's is to remember. Remember the faithfulness of God.
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Although the disciples were with Jesus Christ, it's easier for us to look at the entire corpus of scripture and see the teachings of Christ in the epistles and know that God is faithful.
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We have the wrong view when we look at the disciples and we wonder these things. When we look at them, we say, how do you not see this?
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It seems so obvious to us. Well, that's because we have all the teachings of Paul and Timothy and Titus that we can look back on and we can say, well, we know what's going to happen.
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We know what Jesus is going to do. But these men are living with him. Until they have that saving faith, they don't have the confidence that all is going to turn out well in the end.
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They're living through this moment. So they can't look at all of scripture and they can't sit back and say, it's hard for them.
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We wrapped up our study, thank you Corey, of none greater this morning, this study about the unlimited eternal
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God. When we think about the faithfulness of God, when we remember the faithfulness of God, not just in those moments when we can clearly see the divine providence of God in our lives, these moments, we think about his continued faithfulness because this unlimited, eternal, unchanging
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God is a God who defines his covenants, seals his covenants and keeps his covenants.
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We see in Deuteronomy 7, Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.
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Psalm 119, You God have appointed your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness. 1
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John 1, If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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God has a covenant with his people and he will keep it. He cannot change.
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His faithfulness is everlasting. So, number one, remember the faithfulness of God in these times.
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And number two, repent and believe in him. I don't know where your heart is right now.
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I don't know if your heart is hardened like it was for these disciples or if you do trust the faithfulness of God who has given you the gift of faith.
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I know when I look at these twelve men that they thought they believed, they did.
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They thought they had faith. But Mark, writing for Peter, looking back, these are basically
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Peter's words. Peter is there. Peter's heart was hardened. He said it. He knew.
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These men thought they had faith. But when the going got tough, when the struggles of the boat became too much to bear and the thought of a malicious spirit was coming upon them almost like a straw that breaks the camel's back, their faith did not sustain them.
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Will your faith sustain you? If we lose more loved ones, if we lose more jobs, the economy tanks again, is your heart hardened?
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In Home Group on Friday, we talked about the greatest commandment. Scribes were asking Jesus in the temple, what is the greatest commandment?
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His response is that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
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How are you doing? Are you counting your trials as joy? I know
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I struggle with this. I know I don't love God perfectly every day or really any day. All of my heart, all of my soul, all of my mind.
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I was preparing a sermon yesterday. I don't have time to love you with all my mind. Right? It's not looking good.
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This is what Dr. Sproul said about this great commandment. He said, if the great commandment is to love the
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Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, the great transgression is the failure to keep this commandment.
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That scares me. Those are Sproul's words, not mine. That scares me. And it scares me too.
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And it should scare every single person here. Because that means, never mind everything else, we're sinners.
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We have failed to keep the greatest commandment. So, whether your heart truly is hardened, or you just didn't love
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Christ with all your heart this morning when you just wanted a cup of coffee and for some reason every drive -thru line was totally packed.
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Did everyone see this this morning? What was up with that? The time change gave us an hour, not cost us one.
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Why? I had to go to Cumberland. It was okay. 99 cents, any size.
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All I wanted was a cup of coffee. Did I love Christ with all of my heart? With all of my soul?
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With all of my mind? With all of my strength? No! All of the time this is something we constantly fail at.
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We are sinners. You are sinners. And today, the voice of Jesus should resonate in your mind.
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Oh, you of little faith. Jesus is calling you to repentance.
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Every single one of us, even if we are Christians, we ought every day to think, repent, and believe. We ought to preach the gospel to ourselves every single day.
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The perfect God -man, Jesus Christ, came to seek and to save the lost. What does that even mean? How do we reconcile this?
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How do we put this all together? I thought we were talking about walking on water. Why are we talking about this right now? Because it's all about the greatest commandment.
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Our failure to keep it. Our failure to see Jesus Christ for who he was, who he is.
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That's what's happening throughout this passage. He's there in plain sight as the God -man and nobody sees him for who he is.
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Don't let that be you. God made us.
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He made you. He made me. He is our creator. He can do whatever he wants with his people. His perfection demands perfection.
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And I've already talked about the fact that we are not perfect. 1 John 1 .8
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If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. We see it.
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Sproul pointed it out to us very clearly. We see it here in 1 John. But Jesus came and he did all of these incredible miraculous things.
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He walked on water. He raised people from the dead. He perfectly accomplished everything that was set before him.
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And yet, wrongfully convicted, wrongly accused, betrayed, but perfectly fulfilling the will of the
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Father, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was crucified to pay for sin. Not his, but ours.
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The commandment to love him. And he died to pay for our failure to do that very thing.
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Paul in 2 Corinthians We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
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For our sake, for our sake, he, God the Father, made him, Jesus, to be sin who knew no sin that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
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And then, of course, what happened? Jesus died. Three days later, he was resurrected.
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He conquered death. He conquered sin for his people. He made us into people who could love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
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Survey says 100 % of people die. We will stand before God.
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It could be today. It could be in 30 years. I was procrastinating from work last week. So I went on, you know,
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The Great Procrastinator, capital P, Facebook. Now Meta, Meta, Meta. And I'm doom scrolling, as they say now, right?
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You're scrolling down, you're reading the things. My friend Brad posted this thing. I'm like, this is the hardest thing
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I'm ever going to have to post. I'm like, okay, what's happening? His sister, that morning, 51 years old, dead.
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What? She's a friend of mine. We used to go have tacos together. It was great. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful dear lady.
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No warning, dead. 51. I was kind of a mess that day.
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And that's the lesson. Do not procrastinate by reading Facebook. What happens when you die?
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What are you going to do? Are you going to go up there and say, well, God, I was poor. I didn't have money.
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I didn't have the job I wanted. I never found a husband. I never found a wife. I couldn't have children. You didn't provide for me. What are you going to say?
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Hopefully, you will have remembered the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And you will have bowed the knee before him.
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You will have repented of the sins that you have committed. And believed in him who does provide for his own.
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All that they truly need. Paying for sin on the cross. Being resurrected from the dead.
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We exist to glorify God. That is why we are here. We exist to rest in him.
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And to be content and satisfied with what God has given us. And to remember that he is always, always providing for us.
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Interceding for us. Where is this God? He is not hidden.
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We see his divinity. In this passage. In plain sight. For all to see.
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It is not a secret. We saw his divinity in retreat. We saw a divine rescue.
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We looked at the disciples reaction to the supernatural. The incredible revelation of Jesus Christ as the infinite
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God man. And finally, We saw why it was so hard for the disciples to understand the miracles of God.
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May we learn from this today. And I will leave you with one last R. Let us rejoice to the glory of God.
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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, We thank you for this opportunity to come together this morning. To joyfully, joyfully sing praises to your name.
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To hear the preaching of your word. Even to see Pastor Mike. Lord, as we pray.
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Come to the table. We remember what your son Jesus Christ has done for us. I just pray that you would help each one of us.
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To deeply reflect on who we are. On our faith.
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And on whether or not. We truly understand. That Jesus Christ. The son of God.
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Has died for our sins. Help us as we go forth from this place. Help us to glorify you.
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In everything we say and do. In your name we pray. Amen. No Compromise Radio.
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With Pastor Mike Abendroth. It's a production of Bethlehem Bible Church. In West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a
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Bible teaching church. Firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power. Of God's word.
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Through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015.
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And in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online.