A Panic-Inducing Stroll - [John 6:16-21]

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Sometimes you just think, I know I'd do better than that, and I'm talking about the disciples.

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You just go, come on, are you guys kidding me? I was even thinking earlier today,

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Pastor Mike read part of it, and this is another section of it in Matthew 16, when the

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Lord has explained what's going to happen in the future, how He's going to go to Jerusalem, how

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He's going to suffer, and how He's going to die. And Peter says, that's good,

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Lord, you know, I'll follow you anywhere. No. He says, and Peter, the

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Scripture says, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you,

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Lord, this shall never happen to you. As if Peter had some say in it.

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Jesus turns to him and says, Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

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And I find myself wanting to go, yeah, tell him. He's dopey, because we would do so much better than Peter, right?

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We know so much, we'd never say such stupid things. We'd never be so foolish. Peter's often described as the disciple with the foot -shaped mouth, right?

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I mean, this guy does it all the time. But you know, there are still people today that are saying foolish things.

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One man, many years ago, discussed how Jesus came to visit him one morning while he was shaving.

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And as he describes it, he just keeps on shaving, like nothing's happening. You know, Jesus comes up and starts talking to him, puts his arm around him, and the man finishes his shave.

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Now, think about that and compare it to Jesus, or to Peter, and I go, I don't think that's any smarter.

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What happens when human beings, when frail human flesh meets deity in the

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Bible? Whenever it happens, the human flesh gives. When we see

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Isaiah, what does he do? He just says, I'm undone. If it's anyone else in the Old Testament, they come face -to -face with God and they're convinced they're going to die.

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And in the New Testament, when people recognize that they're in the presence of the

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Son of God, they tend to have a sudden change of attitude. In fact, the result often when

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God meets man in Scripture is terror. Not, you know, just continuing to shave, no nicks, no cuts, no need for a septic pencil.

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Everything's fine. When God meets man, there's a kind of cosmic shift, a change in the attitude of people.

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And that's what we're going to see tonight. And go ahead and open your Bibles to the book of John. We're going to be in chapter 6 tonight.

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But John wrote his book, just to kind of review where we are. John wrote this book to demonstrate the deed of Christ.

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And that's really a lofty goal. That's a high mark to reach for. When he set out to prove that, you're going to have to emphasize different aspects of the life of Jesus than other writers did, and that's exactly what he does in this book.

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And it's common. As I've said before, if we think about, if we go to the library, we look up all the biographies on American presidents.

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If you look for biographies on Teddy Roosevelt, there's a raft of them. Abraham Lincoln, more.

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George Washington, probably as many. Thomas Jefferson, maybe a few less. But if you look at them, you just go, well, are they going to write exactly the same thing over and over again?

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Who would read that? How would you like to be a publisher? Just imagine you're a publisher, and they go, hey,

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I want to write a book on George Washington. And you go, okay, what are the contents going to be? Well, you've got 50 other books about George Washington.

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It's going to be exactly like those. Oh, that'll be a big seller. No, you'd never do that.

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And so with these Gospels, every one of the Gospels, there's a different aspect of the life of Jesus that's really emphasized.

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And in John's Gospel, it's that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And we learn from John 20, verse 31, that he does that so that the readers will believe that Jesus is the

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Christ. Now, the last time we were in, John, we looked at the first 15 verses of chapter 16.

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And we saw Jesus feeding a multitude, a vast multitude, probably about 20 ,000 total men, women, and children.

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And it was a miracle indeed. Why? Because he fed them with a grand total of five loaves of bread and two fish.

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That's getting it done. Now, it should have been evidence that they should receive him as who he said he was.

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But instead, what did they want? They saw what he could do, and they said, we like this guy.

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We think he should lead us in rebellion against the Jewish Empire, throw off the shackles of Rome.

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This is our meal ticket. One man wrote, there's a lot of irony in this passage,

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John chapter 6, verses 1 to 15. He who is already king has come to open his kingdom to men.

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But in their blindness, men try to force him to be the kind of king they want.

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Thus, they fail to get the king they want and lose the kingdom he offers. They miss the whole point.

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And thus, they miss the kingdom he offers. Let's go to our text, which is verses 16 through 21,

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John chapter 6, verses 16 to 21. When evening came, this is the evening after feeding these 5 ,000 men, plus the attendant women and children.

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When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum.

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It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing.

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When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat.

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And they were frightened. But he said to them, it is

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I, do not be afraid. Then they were glad to take him into the boat.

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And immediately, the boat was at the land to which they were going. Now, tonight,

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I'm going to ask some questions, four questions, as our story progresses, so that you will see the growing desperation of the disciples and the way that God uses this situation to affirm to them that Jesus is, in fact, his son.

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Now, I pray that you'll get a sense as we go through this of the growing tension. And what

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I've done to kind of build that up, because you read this and you go, there's not really much here. Well, I went ahead and I've integrated the text from Matthew and Mark that covers the same account.

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And it really gives us a fuller picture of what was going on.

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John's account is really kind of a bare -bones account of what's going on here. I have no water.

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A really bare -bones account of what is going on. And it really seems like his goal in this, if you're a writer or if you're a speaker, they tell you to work on transitions.

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And I'm going to tell you, I think that's basically how he viewed this passage. This is a transition from the feeding of the 5 ,000 and he's going to get into the text, the bread of life text and all that.

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But I really think that this is just kind of, he just wants us to understand how they got from one location to another and what the time frame is.

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It's not much more than that in the Gospel of John. So I've expanded it to bring in these other accounts.

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Now, note well that there is no contradiction between Matthew, Mark and John. It's just a different emphasis for each of these writers.

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But as we bring them together, I think we're going to see that this is really a pretty desperate situation. And when

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I said that this is a panic -inducing stroll, that's no exaggeration.

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First we see, or the first question is, I love this question.

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What could go wrong? This seems like such, this is really a mundane event.

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There's nothing exciting that should come out of this. Look at verse 16. When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat and started across the sea to Capernaum.

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I mean, this is going to be about a five or six mile trip. It's only going to take them an hour or two. It's no big deal.

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And you know what? It's not like, this isn't me, if I can just put myself in the place of the disciples for a minute, this isn't me getting into a boat.

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I'd be scared to death, because I don't do this. But they have a lot of experience, not only on the sea, but on this particular sea.

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This is where they grew up. This is where they cut their teeth. So they get into this boat.

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The work, the day's work is done. They're finished with the crowd.

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And really what's been shown is Jesus display or his command over matter, his ability to multiply the loaves and the fish and feed all these people.

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And if you'll recall, Jesus took really what was an impossible situation, and he solved it.

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They had a dilemma. Remember when he asked Philip, he said, where can we get food, bread for all these people?

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And Philip says, that's like 200 denarii, which is 200 days wages. So, you know, figure the old adage, you make a buck a day.

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Well, it's more than that. It's a lot of money though. This is a lot of money. And he's like,

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Philip's response basically is, you have to be kidding. He said it more nicely than that, but he's like, we don't have that kind of money.

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And even if we did have that kind of money, where could we get that amount of food? That's not going to happen. To just kind of put it, to give it a little perspective, imagine that I don't tell my wife, but I invite 200 people over for dinner.

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And I get home and I said, hey, honey, by the way, we got a few people coming over. She says, oh, really?

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How many? 200. She'd say, what?

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How many? First of all, we can't afford that. Secondly, that's going to empty out big Y. Thirdly, I don't have capacity to cook that much food.

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Fourthly, we don't have any place to sit all these people. What were you thinking? That's basically what is going on here.

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I mean, imagine trying to feed 20 ,000 people and you've got no money and everybody knows you have no money, not that kind of money.

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So I think at least Philip and probably some of the other disciples experienced what we like to call stress, right?

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Janet would be stressed if I did that to her. Of course,

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I'd be a little stressed too, but that's a lot. Gospel of Mark provides another perspective, kind of the flip side.

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You don't have to turn that because we're going to be going here a lot. Just listen to Mark 6 .45. Immediately, listen, listen to the difference.

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Immediately, this is immediately after he fed this massive group of people. 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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So the Lord, or excuse me, they didn't just get into the boat. The Lord compelled them,

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He ordered them, He told them to do so. Why? Well, He wanted them to go to the other side of Galilee and He wanted to be able to,

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I'm going to say, escape the mob. Because if you recall, like I said earlier, they wanted to make

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Him king. Well, they were ready to seize Him to make Him king. So you guys go over there and I'll deal with this crowd.

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Now, I kind of think, again, getting back to the stress level, I think that maybe the disciples were pretty happy.

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Thank you. Were pretty happy to get out to sea.

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Why? Because like I said, I think there was probably a little bit of stress. I think they were anxious to get away from the crowd.

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And you know what? If there's something you really are familiar with, I'm trying to think of a good example, because,

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I mean, I'm so busted up, I can't do anything. I mean, if I could, you know, instead of doing something

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I'm really unfamiliar with, if I could go shoot baskets, if I was still physically capable of doing that, I'd rather do that.

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And for these guys, sailing is like shooting baskets. It's like whatever you like to do.

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For my wife, it's sewing quilts. Whatever you like to do or whatever you're familiar with, it's kind of like it's old home week.

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This is just something that's very familiar, very comfortable to them. And so you're like, OK, get me out of the situation with these 20 ,000 nuts and put me out on the ocean.

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I'm OK with that. Gone is the stress. And now, not only do we get to do what we know, but we're going to get to relieve a little stress because we're going to get out on the water, get a little exercise in.

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We're going to feel manly, feel good. Get out there, get a little exercise. Burn some calories.

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That was the theory. Now, what else happens? Well, the

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Lord spends some time alone in prayer. Mark 6 .46 says this.

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And again, this is a detail that John doesn't give us. And after he had taken leave of them, he went up to the mountain to pray.

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Now, why did he go up to the mountain to pray? Well, it's a good question.

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The text doesn't tell us. I don't think it's far -fetched to say, well, if the disciples were comfortable out on the water, the

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Lord would be comfortable talking to his Father. But that's just speculation.

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But we do know that this crowd was in a frenzy that they wanted to make him king. So let me just throw out this theory to you.

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What if saying the disciples across the sea was a ruse, a fake?

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What's the word I'm looking for here? It's just a rabbit to go chase. Why? What do you think the crowd is thinking when they see the boat of the disciples out on the water?

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What are they thinking? Jesus is going to be with them, right?

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Because that's what happens. The disciples go somewhere. Jesus is with them. What better way to get rid of the crowd than for them to think, wait a minute, there go the disciples.

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We better go after them. He goes up to the mountain to pray. I'm sure he couldn't just say, if they wanted to take him, he couldn't just say, hey, hang on for a minute, guys.

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I'm going to go up to the mountain and pray. When I come back down, then you can go ahead and seize me. That wasn't it.

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But again, what could go wrong? Well, let's find out. Let's go back to John chapter 6.

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Verse 17 says this, and this is our second question, what else can go wrong? Because it's going to go from, you know, what could go wrong to what else can go wrong.

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Verse 17, it was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing.

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Now, it's interesting that John writes here, had not yet come to them. It's really an odd thing to say, unless he knows or anticipates that the readers would already know that Jesus is going to come to them.

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Well, why would he know that? Because he's writing much later than Matthew and Mark, and his presumption would be that most of his readers would already be familiar with this story.

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And it's almost kind of comforting to just think, okay, I know you guys are familiar with Mark and Matthew, but don't worry, the end doesn't change.

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It's just, he hasn't come to them yet. Don't worry about it. But if we go back to Mark chapter 6, really what we see is the

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Lord watching and waiting. And when evening came, the text says, Things are just going to start going downhill.

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They're making headway painfully. They're going into a headwind. If you've ever sailed, you know that a headwind is not a good thing.

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And in fact, we're going to see eventually, they can't use any kind of sails. They're just rowing. And it doesn't even matter if you're rowing.

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If you're rowing into a headwind, the wind still slows you down because you've got the bulk of the ship going into the wind.

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Now, we will see in Matthew, I'm also going to bring in Matthew 14, the Lord went to them when they were getting desperate.

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Matthew 14 .24 says this, In other words, they're out there in the middle of this lake, the

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Sea of Galilee. Again, as we get more detail from these different accounts, we see it's just getting worse and worse.

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Beaten by the wave. Beaten means it's the word for tortured or harassed.

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We get a pretty clear picture of what is taking place. The wind's coming up or coming down off the mountains.

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It's stirring up the Sea of Galilee. The sea is getting more and more tumultuous. It's getting choppy.

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It's getting hard to hold the boat anywhere.

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You know, they're just flopping around out there. Sometime after they had set sail, after they'd made some progress, because think about it, if it started right away, they could just turn right around.

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But they get out there in good ways, and then all of a sudden it just starts going crazy on them.

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And again, these guys are experienced. They know what they're doing. They've been out at sea now for many hours.

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In fact, Mark and Matthew tell us that it's now the fourth watch of the night, which by the

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Roman system would mean it's between 3 and 6 a .m. They left sometime after dinner. We don't know exactly what time, but let's say it's 7 or 8 o 'clock, whatever time it was.

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And now it's between 3 and 6 a .m. What should have taken them a couple hours, tops, has turned into a multi -hour problem here.

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They're needing sleep. I mean, everybody, most people like to be asleep by 3 in the morning or so.

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So they're getting tired. They're probably physically tired from rowing, from trying to hold the boat in line and make some progress.

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And this trip is turning out to be far more difficult, longer, and more dangerous than they possibly could have imagined.

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I don't think it's hard to say at all, or a jump to come to the conclusion that they're about at the end of the rope.

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The boat is getting battered. They're getting battered. And it's like they're rowing in place, trying to make progress in a violently rough sea into a headwind, while the wind and the storm are beating them down.

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So, first question, what could go wrong? Second question, what else can go wrong?

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Third question, what is that? Look at verse 19 of the text. It says,

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When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened.

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Frightened. Why? What was causing them to get even more afraid than they were?

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I mean, they're afraid of the conditions. And now something, well, it really is, it's Jesus, but they don't know that.

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Matthew says this, But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said,

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It is a ghost. And they cried out in fear. I mean, just imagine being on that boat.

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You know, we like to mock the disciples. But now they're out there in the sea. The wind's whipping up.

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The waves are going crazy. The boat's bumping all over the place. They can't make any progress. They've been out there probably four or five times, as long as they thought they were going to be out there.

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And now here comes a ghost. They cry out in fear.

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They're terrified. They were used to the

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Sea of Galilee. They knew the Sea of Galilee, but now what they've spent their whole life working on has really become a life -threatening situation.

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And they see this figure approaching them. There's no way that they can think this is good. They didn't call 911.

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This is no police officer. This isn't the lifeguard. In fact, if I was there,

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I know what I would have done. I'm not going to try to boast or anything. I would have been screaming, it's Nessie. She's out to get us.

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We're done for. Mark adds a little bit more information.

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He says that Jesus, walking on the sea, meant to pass them by.

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Remember, the plan was to meet them on the other side. They were supposed to cross, and then He was going to pray and then meet them sometime later.

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But things have changed. The plan has changed. And finally, their fear is relieved.

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Matthew records it this way in Matthew 14, 27. But immediately, Jesus spoke to them, saying,

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Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid. The Lord can see and likely hear that the disciples are in a panic.

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I mean, it doesn't take much. Have you ever seen anybody in a panic? If you listen to the kind of screaming, and I bet we don't have everything recorded for us, but I'm pretty sure that there was probably some yelling at one another and all kinds of different commands going on and people trying to figure out what to do, how to get where they were supposed to go, how to get out of this storm.

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And He says, Take heart. It is I. Take heart is a very tender thing.

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In fact, He said it to Paralytic before He forgave his sins. And it's as if Jesus is just saying,

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It's okay. I, your Master, am here. You're going to be fine. And isn't that what rescuers do?

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If you're in a car accident and the paramedics come rushing up to you, what do they do? Do they run up and say, You're done for?

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No. They come up and they reassure you. You know, if you've got some massive wound, what do you do?

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Or what do they do? They tell you, Don't worry about it. We've got this. You're going to be all right. Calm the people down.

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Now imagine how comforting the sight of Jesus would be. Lenski writes it this way.

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He says, We must not overlook the storm and the raging waves.

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These howled and dashed about Him, but they did not affect

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Him in the least. He was not tossed up and down. His clothes and His body were not wet with spray.

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It was simply Jesus as they had left Him the evening before.

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Only now He was walking on the storm -tossed sea. I think it's pretty safe to say that they've gone from panic to awestruck.

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Because Jesus, defying all the weather and everything they see all around Him, the waves and everything, is just walking out on the water and comes over to them and says,

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It's okay, don't worry. I'm here. Peter responds as he frequently does by pushing the envelope.

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Matthew 14 records it this way. And Peter answered Him, Lord, if it is

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You, command me to come to You on the water. He, being

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Jesus, said, Come. So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus.

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Notice again, it says he walked on the water and came to Jesus. Just think how quickly

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Peter turned around. He'd gone from being frantic, like the other disciples, because of the conditions on the sea, compounded by the approaching ghost, and all of a sudden he's emboldened, just like that.

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I think that kind of turn of attitude is pretty common for Peter. But his love for Jesus and his almost puppy -dog eagerness to be with his

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Lord are commendable. Those are good things. He loves Jesus. He trusts Jesus. He says,

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Just command me. Tell me to come to You and I'll do it. And he does.

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He believes that whatever Jesus tells him to do will be good and right and safe.

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And look at that. Again, Peter's walking on water. Now, there is a sad story making the rounds.

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And you know what? I spent about 20 seconds looking. I can't really verify or not verify it about the pastor in Africa.

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I'm sure you've seen it. It was about a year ago who said, and that's his congregation, he was going to go out and walk on water and he wound up drowning.

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But you know what? If it's true, it's just sad to me. It's very sad.

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Because there's no command to do anything like that. It's just a foolish thing to do. But Peter actually did it.

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At least for a moment or two. We don't know exactly how long he went. But then Peter fails.

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Matthew records it this way. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried out,

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Lord, save me. Jesus immediately reached out His hand and took hold of him, saying to him,

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O you of little faith, why did you doubt? What do we know from that right away?

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We know the wind is still blowing. The storm is still rocking. So again, the picture is, the

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Lord had walked several miles out on the Sea of Galilee. The waves have raged.

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The wind has blown. And it's severe enough to put these expert sailors into a panic.

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And it's still storming. Jesus is standing. Peter gets out of the boat and begins walking on the surface miraculously before he starts looking at the conditions again.

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The wind. And remember, so yeah, right. This is scary. This is not supposed to happen.

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Look at everything that's going on around me. And he starts sinking. He recognizes that he is not where he wants to be.

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He's not where he's comfortable being. It would be like me being on a skateboard. I could be up there for a minute, and I could be, you know, things could be going well.

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And then all of a sudden, I'm going to look around and go, wait a minute, I'm not supposed to be on this skateboard. I'm going to fall down for sure.

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He panics. He knows he's not supposed to be doing what he's doing. In other words, in his mind, he just starts thinking, wait a minute, wait a minute.

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I don't walk on water. But Jesus grabs him before Peter's in any danger, apparently pulling him back up to the surface of the lake.

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Why did Peter fail? Well, because of his doubts, because he saw the storm.

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He saw the wind that was still raging. And he recognizes that he can't do it.

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Peter couldn't do it. And that's exactly right. He couldn't do it. On his own, it was absolutely impossible.

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I was trying to remember the man's name today, and I couldn't. I went on a bike ride once up to, we lived in Palmdale, and up to Lake Los Angeles, which is, well, or actually

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Little Rock Dam, which is not too far from our house. But part of the ride was just like totally uphill, crazy uphill.

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And we got to this one point, Bernie was his name. Now I remember it. I'm riding with Bernie.

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Bernie is about, he's like a semi -pro rider. He's about 6 '4 and weighed about 140 pounds because bike riders don't wear, or they don't weigh anything.

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That's Pastor Mike's secret. So we get to this one part of the ride where some of it's uphill and everything, and I'm just kind of hammering my way up the hill.

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And then all of a sudden there's a little dip, and you come out of that dip, and it's a hairpin. And when you get out of the hairpin, it is straight up.

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So you have to stop or slow down for the hairpin, and then you make the sharp turn, and you come up, and it's just like hitting the wall.

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And I'm standing up, and I'm just like cranking on these pedals trying to go, and I go,

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Bernie, I'm not going to make it. And he said, Yes, you are. And he came up next to me, and he put his hand in the small of my back, and he just started pushing me up, and I'm going,

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Dude, you are riding for both of us. And he said, No, you're doing it. You're doing it.

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I knew better. But this is exactly the same situation.

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Peter winds up realizing, I can't do this. And he was right. He needed the

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Lord. He needed the Lord's power. Now, theologically, was

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Jesus able to walk in the Sea of Galilee because he was God in the flesh? Yes.

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I think that's possible. Our text doesn't exactly tell us that. I think maybe it was answered or stated that way in another text that we'll get to here in a minute.

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But I think he was equally capable of doing it in his humanity.

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And you say, Well, how could that be? Bear with me here for a minute.

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What did Jesus always do? The Father's will. How did he do the Father's will? How did he do what he did?

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By the Spirit's empowerment. In his humanity, he never sinned.

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Jesus never sinned. Why? Because he had perfect faith. His faith never wavered.

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And it is our lack of faith, our lack of complete trust and devotion to God that leads us to sin.

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What do the disciples say? We believe, help our unbelief. It's the story of my life.

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I believe, help my unbelief. I don't believe enough. But there's nothing inconsistent in believing the

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Holy Spirit held him up. Jesus was tested and tried in all ways, just as we are, but he never doubted, never failed to love

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God, never wavered in his dependence upon the Holy Spirit. He's not telling

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Peter, and it's important to note this, he's not telling Peter to try harder next time, but we do see that his faith doesn't match his enthusiasm.

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Peter's super enthusiastic. He's super willing to do whatever the Lord wants him to do. He just can't do it on his own.

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And as soon as he took his eyes off Christ and started looking around at the chaos around him, he panicked.

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Hendrickson writes this. He says, strictly speaking, it would not have been necessary for Jesus to have reached out his hand to rescue

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Peter. In other words, he didn't have to do that. He goes on and he says, a simple command would have sufficed.

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He could have said in his deity, rise, you know,

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I'm just commanding you to get up out of the water. But he didn't. He reached out. Why? There's something comforting, something reassuring in the touch of Jesus.

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And he wanted Peter to be reassured. He wanted him to be comforted. It was like, you know what,

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Peter? Good job for trying. What could go wrong?

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What else could go wrong? Our second question. Third question. What is that? Well, it turns out it was who is that?

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Fourth question is who is Jesus? The disciples long night ends in a second miracle.

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Look at verse 21. Then they were glad to take him into the boat. And immediately the boat was at the land to where to which they were going.

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Immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. He's the only one.

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John is the only one who gives us this detail. And what does it tell us? They're out there in the middle of a lake.

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They're not really. We don't know if it's exactly in the middle, but they're out there. They're not close to the shore. And immediately after he gets in, they're at the shore.

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They're exactly where they wanted to go. I think that's a miracle.

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And I'm going to define miracle just this way. God intervening in the space -time continuum and doing what only

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God can do. Moving that boat. Matthew adds this detail.

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In Matthew 14 he says, And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. So here's what happens.

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Jesus reaches out. He grabs Peter who has fallen. They both get into the boat.

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The storm stops. And immediately they are on the shoreline. Exactly where they wanted to be.

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This trip, I think, was taken as a diversion. But it was taken with zero trepidation.

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In other words, before the trip, you think the disciples were worried that any of this was going to happen? That their lives literally would be on the line?

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I don't think so. They were thinking, this is no problem. We've done this our whole lives. But I'm telling you what, they were pretty happy to hit the shore.

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In Mark 6, verse 51 and 52, we read this.

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And they were utterly astounded. For they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

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All getting to who is Jesus. Well, why were their hearts hardened? They hardened their hearts.

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Why? They didn't get it. They didn't understand who he was.

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We don't exactly know what that meant. We don't know if they were upset with what he did.

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We don't understand. But one man, Kostenberger, writes this. He says, In other words, you guys didn't understand it when

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I fed all these people. That wasn't enough for you. But you're really important to me, and I'm going to show you who

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I am, or God's going to show you who I am. By virtue of me being able to do what I did tonight.

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They needed it. Their hearts were hardened. They did not understand the greatness of what Jesus had done.

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They didn't fully understand who he was. And so they experienced this.

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Matthew records in Matthew 14, verse 32. And those in the boat worshipped him, saying,

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Truly, you are the son of God. Isn't that the point?

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Hendrickson writes, By acknowledging Jesus as God's son or the son of God, they confess that they now realize what the

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Father had previously declared, and what even the demons had confessed was true indeed.

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They are overwhelmed by the infinite power and love of Jesus, that is, by the fact that he was able to do what he had just done, and that he was willing to do it for them.

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This is the greatness of our Lord. Now, some observations real quickly. This passage, this whole episode, the three passages, really, is not about Jesus wanting to have a relationship with you.

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You say, Why would you even say that? Because I once heard a seminary graduate preach that.

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Not my seminary. He said, The point of this passage is

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Jesus really wants to have a relationship with you. Really? That's the point? Now, it's true,

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Jesus does want to have a relationship with believers, and he longs to have other people repent, but that's not the point of this passage.

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Other people say this, or I'll just put it in the negative again. The passage is not about trusting the

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Lord in the storms of life. Oh, they just learned to trust him in the storms of life.

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That's some storm. I think they could have learned it some other way. They got to see the mastery he had over nature.

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Is that what the passage is stressing, that we need to trust Jesus in the storms of life?

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No. In fact, again, John almost glosses over the incident. He has far less information than Matthew and Mark do, but the most salient point he provides is he's the only one who tells us about them instantly being on the shore.

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What can we learn from this passage? Well, we know this, that Jesus cares deeply for his disciples.

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We know that. We know that. Why? Because he stopped. They're in a panic, and he stops walking across the lake and goes directly to them and helps them.

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He calms them. So what can we infer from that?

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Well, that he loves us. We know that he loves us because he died for us, but there's a certain tenderness that's shown here, a compassion even in the way, as Hendrickson described, that he took

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Peter's hand when he didn't have to. He wanted to assure him. Now, while it's true that this passage is not trusting or about trusting

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Jesus in the storms of life, I think that is an apt metaphor. If we even think about what caused

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Peter to fall, we could say objectively, it's his lack of faith, but he also did what?

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It said he saw the wind. He looked at the wind. He looked at the circumstances, the conditions around him, and he just thought, this is crazy,

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I can't do this. He panicked. He, as I put in my notes here, he started doing glug, glug, glug, which is, you know, it's right before you drown, but he didn't do that.

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But it's true, right? When we are focused on Christ and not on the circumstances surrounding us, not on the wind, not on the storm, not on the bills, not on the disease, not on all the difficulties of life, then what?

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Those things don't overwhelm us. We can handle life. And that should be our focus.

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It should be the Lord Jesus Christ and the hope that he's given us. What did he say?

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He said, my kingdom is not of this world. We are joint heirs with him.

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We look forward to his kingdom. We have a lot to look forward to, but we can get caught up in the difficulties of this life and forget to focus on Christ.

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The only, here's the last lesson, I think, the only appropriate response to seeing the

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Lord Jesus Christ for who he is, is worship. When they see that he is indeed the son of God, what do they do?

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They worship him, and that's the right thing to do. He is the Messiah, the

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Christ, the son of God, the only sin bearer, the lamb who was slain and raised from the dead.

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We have really almost every advantage over these disciples. We have scripture.

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We can learn from, you know, it's like the Old Testament was written, why, for our instruction, so that we could learn from their examples, from their bad examples.

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We can learn from the disciples, too, the things that they failed in. But we see also how the

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Lord takes these frail, broken, sinful vessels and does mighty, mighty things with them.

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Because it's not about the goodness of the disciples, the strength of the disciples.

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It's about the strength of God and the strength of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, what a blessing it is to see how you do care for your children, how you even care for these disciples in the midst of this great difficulty.

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Lord, how you sovereignly work all these things out, even better and more vital to our daily life, how you care for us, how even when we can't see the good in things, when we're tempted to panic, when we're tempted to despair, to become mired in the troubles of this life.

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Father, how good it is to remember that you work all things together for good, even if at the moment they seem overwhelming to us.

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You are a great

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God, a good God, a loving God. And Father, we thank you for sending your

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Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die in our place, not because we're not quite good enough, but because apart from your work in us, we can do nothing.

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We fail on every score. We could never please you, but Jesus perfectly obeyed, then died a sacrificial death, was raised on the third day.

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Father, what a blessing it is that you have granted us saving, believing faith.

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And Lord, for any here tonight who don't know you, I pray that you would fix these truths of their minds, not just that Jesus is able to overcome their circumstances, but that Jesus Christ is

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God in the flesh. He is worthy of our worship and all honor and praise.