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Sermon for Midweek of Epiphany 4
Matthew 14:22-33
This evening we pick up Sunday’s theme of miracles on the water. In that Gospel, we saw Jesus calming a storm at sea. In this evening’s reading, He does something similar, but only after performing two other miracles. Your Bible probably has a heading for this reading like, “Jesus walks on the water.” And yet, for as amazing as that was, the greater miracle was the second one, the fact that Peter walks on the water, at least for a few steps, before he begins to sink. The message in this Gospel is very similar to Sunday’s message. Even the winds and the sea obey Him. But this text is here to teach us an even more important lesson than that. God the Holy Spirit gave us this text to teach us how to stay afloat when the winds of life are at hurricane force and the waves of doubt threaten to sweep us away. Jesus knew long ago that his people here on earth would face one crisis after another on our journey toward heaven. He knew how quickly faith can turn into doubt as a result, how easily his saints can begin to sink. So He engineered this miracle, this walking on water event, and made sure you and I would hear about it so that our faith may always stay afloat. Here in today’s Gospel, Jesus offers A Focused Faith for a Sinking Saint.
It had been a very long day. Jesus had healed many, had taught the multitudes, had provided food for 5,000 people using just five loaves of bread and two fish. At the end of the day, He made His disciples get in a boat and go ahead of Him to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and they spent most of the night rowing, but the boat was tossed by the waves because the wind was against it. Then, in the hours just before dawn, they looked back over the waters and saw what they could only figure was a ghost, because it was walking toward them on top of the water. They were afraid, but Jesus called out to them, Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.
Peter wanted to make sure he wasn’t just hearing things. “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to You on the water.” “Come,” Jesus said. So Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. It’s one thing for the All-powerful Son of God to defy gravity, but it’s another thing when a simple human being does it. And notice where the power was. Peter didn’t just hop out of the boat as soon as he saw Jesus walking toward him. He didn’t just believe he could defy gravity. He very wisely waited for Jesus’ command, for Jesus’ Word telling him he could come out and walk on the water, and then he had something to put his faith in.
That’s an important lesson about faith, as we also heard on Sunday. Real faith is always based on a specific word or promise of God. If God hasn’t said it, you have no right or reason to believe it. That would be an empty faith, a self-created faith with no power in it. But if God has said it, you can bet your life on it, even if it defies all logic, even if it defies the laws of gravity.
Peter was doing well for a while. His faith was focused on Jesus’ power, and on Jesus’ command to him, which gave him the power to walk on the water. A focused faith, a Word-based faith, will stay afloat. But when faith loses its focus, it sinks. When Peter saw the wind, he was afraid and began to sink. Peter looked at the wind, and faith took backseat to his logic. “The wind is so strong! How can I possibly stand against it? How can I possibly stay on top of the water? Oh, look. Now I’m sinking. It’s getting worse. I’m going to drown!”
Peter took his eyes off Jesus. He looked away. But the problem wasn’t with his eyes. Jesus’ power wasn’t attached to Peter’s eyes, but to his heart, and Peter’s heart looked away. It looked away and focused on the problem, on the crisis of wind and waves. That’s the definition of doubt: to stop trusting in what Jesus says, and to start trusting in something or someone else. In this case, Peter stopped trusting in Jesus’ word and started trusting his own senses and his own experience with wind and waves and gravity. That’s a formula for a sinking saint.
Crises are bound to come into every believer’s life. There’s a right way and a wrong way to handle them, and God used this extraordinary event on the Sea of Galilee to show you the wrong way: Take your eyes off Jesus. Look at the problem, focus on the problem, see the wind and the waves as bigger than Jesus, more powerful than Jesus, more real than Jesus’ Word. Turn the volume down on Jesus’ Word, and turn up the volume on the wind. And that’s when you start sinking down, further and further.
That almost happened to the writer of Psalm 73, part of which we sang this evening. He looked around and saw the righteous—including himself!—suffering in this world. Meanwhile, he saw the wicked prospering all around him, and it didn’t make sense. As for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the boastful when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. The Psalmist was slipping, sinking down, too, when he took his focus off of God’s Word and looked at his suffering, and at the prosperity of those who don’t believe in God. But God corrected his vision and refocused his faith, just as He did for Peter on the sea.
Peter, when he began to sink, looked away from the wind, back to Jesus to save him. “Lord, save me!” he cried out. He may have doubted Jesus’ word enabling him to walk on the water, but Peter didn’t doubt Jesus’ ability and willingness to save him from going all the way under.
And Jesus did save him, in more ways than one. Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him. He didn’t let Peter drown. He didn’t make him splash around in the water for a while, gasping for air until he had learned his lesson. Immediately, He saved His sinking saint.
And then he refocused Peter’s faith. “You of little faith,” He said, “why did you doubt?” “Don’t you know by now, Peter, that if I say something, it will always be the truth? That if I promise something, it will always come to pass? Don’t you know that My Word is more reliable than the laws of physics themselves?”
On Sunday, we attributed this kind of doubt among believers to our sinful flesh. What specific promise of Jesus gets obscured in your heart when your flesh gets the better of you? That He really is working all things together for your good? That He won’t allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear? That He promises to provide all you need, so that you can seek first His kingdom and His righteousness? That He will be there on the other side of death to receive you into His heavenly kingdom?
The Holy Spirit had all of us in mind when He inspired this event to be recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. It all happened for a reason, to teach us how easily our faith can lose its focus on Jesus and start to sink, so that we know what to do when we do start to sink, to refocus on Jesus and His Word and call upon Him to save us, and, with the Lord’s help, so that maybe we can weather some of these storms without sinking at all! So that we can say, with the Psalmist, Whom have I in heaven but You? And I desire nothing on earth besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail. But God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever. Amen.
