Could You Walk on Water?

Introduction

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone. But the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night, he came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said, It is a ghost. And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid. And Peter answered him, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.

And Jesus 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, and beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying, O you of little faith, why did you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased, and those in the boat worshiped him, saying, Truly, you are the Son of God. Unless you’re very new to religion in general, you have likely heard classes and sermons on this account. I myself have heard many from many different perspectives. I’ve heard lessons about the faith of Peter, and I’ve even heard sermons about the lack of faith of Peter.

But this morning I don’t want to analyze any of the characters in the story specifically. I want us to analyze ourselves. I want us to look inward. Ultimately, I want to ask the question could you walk on water? And this is a question not necessarily of ability in my mind, but more one of preparation. I don’t know for sure because I don’t have a time machine, but I doubt that Peter woke up that morning saying, All right, it’s walk on water day. Just breathe, you’ll be okay. Nobody’s ever done it before, but today is the day, and I’m gonna do it. No, I would venture to guess, and I would venture that this is an educated guess that Peter had no clue what awaited him. He had no clue that he would get out of a boat in the middle of the sea in the middle of a storm.

He had no clue that he would walk on water, something that defies all logic and reason. And he probably had no idea that he was going to sink right in front of his Savior that day as we think about our lives as Christians, it’s imperative, it is critical that we consider what if we are asked to walk on water. Metaphorically, not literally, not physically. What if today is the day that the Lord asks you to get out of your boat and to trust Him to come to Him in the middle of a difficult or treacherous situation? Could you get out of the boat and could you walk on water? And I think that is an important question to consider, because the reality is at some point you will sink.

At some point, your circumstances, your situation, your series of life events will take you to a place where God asks you to trust Him through a time of difficulty and struggle. And when I say those words, maybe you’re thinking of a time right now that you’re dealing with.

A place where your faith is the only thing that takes you through. To trust God. If you have not had that experience yet, you live long enough, you will.

1. Peter Allowed Himself to Be Distracted

When I think about Peter and what he endured that night, as confident as he felt, he felt confident enough to get out of the boat, he ultimately sunk. And while Jesus says, Oh, you have little faith, and we say that Peter’s sinking was due to his wavering or his lack of faith. I think in many ways his faith was a symptom of something deeper. The deeper problem, I believe, is that Peter allowed himself to be distracted by the things around him. Because you notice Peter didn’t get out of the boat and immediately start to sink. He got out of the boat and he did something that defies the laws of nature, that defy the laws of physics. He walked on water. And only then later did he begin to sink.

After he became distracted by all of the things that were happening around him. After he realized the reality of his situation.

How crazy it was that he was actually walking on top of the water. Think about who Peter was for just a moment. A seasoned fisherman who was well versed in the sea. Fishermen lived on the sea. They lived for the waters.

To do anything but sink would have been ludicrous. Of course, if I jump out of the boat, I’m gonna sink. And yet he finds the guts to get out of the boat and he walks on water, before inevitably becoming distracted by the reality of his circumstances. I want you to reflect just for a moment about your life. Think about just this past week. Life is hectic and busy, wouldn’t you say? Maybe for some of you that’s a gross understatement. You say, well, hectic and busy, spend a day with me, and you’ll see hectic and busy. And let me tell you, Satan loves to distract us. And he loves to take our focus off track. He loves to use the chaos and the hectic nature of our busy lives to take our focus away from where it should be.

I think about Matthew chapter 13. And y’all read through this a little bit Wednesday night. Matthew chapter 13, beginning in verse 20, when Jesus is explaining the parable of the sower. He says, beginning in verse 20, and as for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. You see, Jesus says there are some who will walk on water for a little while until things get tough. And then they will sink. He continues in verse 22. As for what was sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

You ever find yourself busy with the cares of the world? You ever find yourself distracted by the deceitfulness of riches? And I don’t mean that you might say, well, I want to have 10 million dollars by the time that I retire. I mean how easy it is to think about money all the time. To live for money and material things.

And when I think about my abilities to help my team perform well, it’s about money. And when I go to pay the bills, the ones that aren’t on auto pay, I’m thinking about money. And we’re talking about potentially moving closer this way, but you know what that requires? That requires money. And it requires thinking about the value of my current home and what the market value of a new home is going to be, and how big of a difference does the interest rate make. Think about it when you’re buying a vehicle or when you’re going to the grocery store, how much more groceries cost. It’s hard to not think about the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches. And how easily those things can cause us to sink.

From what we see in the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t usually explain his parables. In fact, just prior to this account in Matthew chapter 13, Jesus tells his disciples, there are some parables that you’re not going to understand. And there are parables that the crowds that listen to me aren’t going to understand. Yet he took the time to ensure that the disciples understood this critical fact that Satan seeks to distract and destroy.

2. Focus on the Right Things

So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. If you are focused on the right things, your whole body, your whole being will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If the light then inside you is darkness, how great is that darkness?

I would venture to guess that no one here among us this morning wants to be full of darkness. And yet, how often do we consider the distractions around us and the darkness they can manifest in our lives? Then he goes on to say after these verses that you can’t serve two masters. A lesson that Peter learned all too well that fateful night on the sea. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul writes to the Corinthians there in verse in verse 6, so we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Last night Amanda and I were watching TV, and as streaming television can go sometimes, the audio kept going, but the picture froze.

And we were there listening to the audio, trying to like imagine what was happening in the remainder of the TV show. And Amanda said, This must be what watching TV is like if you can’t see. All you can do is hear.

Water. And then he began to walk by sight. And not sight looking at Jesus. He walked by sight, looking around at everything that was happening. And he realized how crazy and absurd it was what he was doing. And it began to sink. One more passage in Hebrews chapter 12 to round out this idea. In Hebrews chapter 12, starting in verse 1, the writer says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which cling so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing your eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

The Hebrew writer says, What you need to do is focus on the right things.

How many of you have seen those videos on YouTube of someone who celebrates right before they get to the end zone? And they fumble or they trip, or a runner who is finishing a marathon and they decide to celebrate early and they trip or they slow down and someone else passes them up.

3. Everyone Sinks at Some Point

On Jesus, with his eye looking toward the right thing, but he took his focus away from Jesus, away from the goal, away from the prize, and he started to sink. The truth is that everyone sinks at some point. Everyone’s faith is tested. And because we are imperfect human beings, at some point, every one of us fails. I think about the beginning of the Bible in Genesis and the account that we have of Adam and Eve and how they took their focus from God to instead they focused on Satan and the lies he told and the tree of life that looked so good to eat. And what happened to them when they took their eyes away from where they should be, they were expelled from the garden because of it.

And I think about the opposite end of the Bible, at the end of the New Testament in the book of Revelation, and we see church after church after church that is warned because they had either already removed their focus from where it should have been, or they were well on their way to removing their focus from where it should have been, and instead letting the things around them and the cares of the world become their focus. And each one of us, given enough time, we will all be faced with the distractions that Satan throws our way. And we will begin to sink just like Peter did. What distractions are you dealing with in your life right now? What cares try to occupy your mind when you put your head on your pillow at night and you try to go to sleep?

When you wake up in the middle of the night and you try to go back to sleep. What cares of life are in front of you? When you think about those things that you are struggling with that you’re dealing with in your life, whether you might think that they are minor, whether you might think they are our major earth-shattering events going on in your life, I want you to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that sinking is good. On the surface, I understand this might seem completely contrary to everything I’ve just said. That you don’t want to sink. That you should focus on the things that you need to be focusing on, have your mind and your heart in the right place. But we are humans and we make mistakes and we fall short and we take our focus away from God from time to time.

And we sink. But that is not the end of the story. It must have been truly terrifying to be where Peter was. If you can put yourself in his sandals for a moment.

He was a seasoned fisherman. He knew the sea.

No doubt a fisherman is going to know how to read the weather and to understand how to navigate storms and where all the good fishing spots are. He was familiar with how the wind and the water smelled. He understood the feeling of being tossed around by waves and the thumping from waves hitting the boat. For those of you who don’t fly very often, and I’m one of them.

But you look around and you realize perhaps how silly you are for being afraid when no one else is afraid. Perhaps because they fly all the time.

Peter was in his element. No doubt he himself had been caught in torrential storms before.

How many of you got in your car this morning and you felt out of place? Well, maybe if you just bought a new car. And today’s your first time driving it, maybe it felt a little weird. He was in his element, but then he left the safety of the boat. He left his element. He left the comfort of what he knew and understood. And he went into a whole new world that he had no idea how to navigate. He got out of his element and into a world he had never once experienced before. I have to guess that it must have been a baffling mental conflict for Peter between the world of fishing that he knew and he understood, and the seas that he knew and could read and he lived on, and at the same time doing something that he had never done before, walking on water with the Lord standing near him.

4. Sinking Causes Us to Reach

Although there are times in our lives when Satan will try to destroy us, to distract us, to sink us with chaos and uncertainty and stress and emotional difficulty. And you can add your own adjectives there. You need to know that sinking is good. I’ve said it a couple times now, and you’re probably asking, well, tell us how it’s good. Sinking causes us to reach.

It’s a natural human reaction for us to reach out when we’re underwater. Jacob can verify this. I remember as a kid when we would go to a pool. Our neighbor’s neighbor had a pool, and sometimes as kids we would go swimming. And me and my three brothers and other kids, all together in a pool, it could get pretty hectic and chaotic in a pool. Hitting each other with pool noodles, and I don’t mean like bopping each other, I mean like full-blown, trying to knock each other out with pool noodles. Playing some sort of twisted version of chicken while jumping off the diving board, or just the idea of boys being boys and holding each other’s heads under the water for as long as possible. When your lungs need air and your body needs oxygen, you will naturally, without thinking about it, fight and claw to reach for anything that might help.

And in the same way, Peter reached out as a natural human response to the fact that he was sinking. Seeing the effects of the wind and seeing the giant waves, and perhaps seeing the boat near him and knowing that he’s no longer in the safety of the boat. Seeing that boat being tossed around, perhaps he was close enough to see the fear in the eyes of his brother and the other disciples.

5. Sinking Causes Us to Acknowledge How Badly We Need God

Perhaps the genuine fear of losing his life compelled him to reach out to Jesus for help. Perhaps it was the physical action of beginning to sink that caused him to do what he needed to do in the first place and refocus on the Lord. But Satan also causes us to acknowledge, I’m sorry, sinking also causes us to acknowledge who we are and how badly we need God.

How doubt seems to play a prominent role in this story. Being in the boat during the storm, the disciples initially doubt that it’s Jesus in the first place.

Not, well, I mean, guys, we’ve seen Jesus do some pretty crazy stuff. They say, no, it’s a ghost. They doubt that it’s him in the first place. Then Peter got out of the boat and seeing the storm around him, he began to doubt himself. I wonder how long it took for Peter to look around and go, what are you doing, you idiot? What are you thinking? You can’t walk on water. This is just a guess of mine, but I wonder if Peter ever actually doubted Jesus specifically after Jesus called him to come to him on the water. I wonder if Peter actually doubted Jesus specifically. I tend to think that Peter was simply overwhelmed with his circumstances. And once he realized that he was performing the impossible feat of walking on something that you cannot walk on, perhaps it was just game over in his mind.

Yet, as much as doubt may have played a role in this story.

Notice that as much as Peter’s faith was being challenged in that moment and he was desperate for someone to save him, he does not look back at the boat. He doesn’t look for his brother and the other disciples to help him or to jump in and rescue him. He doesn’t look to other people. He only looks to Jesus. He knew that Jesus was his only hope. Does that seem like someone who doubts? Does that seem like someone who’s desperate? To me, that seems like someone who understands who Jesus was and what he was capable of. You see, sometimes we just need to sink. Sometimes we need to go through difficult, challenging things. Sometimes we need to have no hope in ourselves and no hope in anyone around us.

Sometimes we need to be in that impossible situation. Where we need to be completely helpless and unable to get through on our own. This flies in the face of that old, I guess it’s a religious saying, that God won’t give you more than you can handle. Oh, yes, he will. In fact, God does sometimes give us more than we can handle, specifically in order to cause us to reach out to Him as our only hope.

I’m going to try to hold it together and tell you a quick story. When Abigail was about a week old, I had lost all faith in the medical staff of the hospital that we were at in San Antonio. And I began to change my sleeping habits a little bit, and by changing my sleeping habits, I mean I’d stop sleeping. And I would spend most of the day with Abigail sitting in a chair by her bed. And in the afternoon I would go take a nap, two or three hours. And then I would go to the hotel, to the hospital cafeteria, and I would get the largest thing of coffee that they had and a couple of energy drinks, and I know that’s not healthy. And I would stay up all night with her.

I wanted to know what the doctors and nurses were doing. I wanted to know how they were taking care of her and what was going on. And it was around when she was a week old. And there was one night I was sitting there in a chair next to her bed. It was about three in the morning, and I’m sure I was hopped up on caffeine to some extent. And her alarms started to go off. And nurses flew into the room and turned all the lights on. And I remember it happening in slow motion. I have no memory of the normal frame of time that was happening. Everything in my memory was in slow motion. And I remember looking at the monitor, and the monitor showed that her heart wasn’t beating.

And I remember seeing the on call doctor literally run down the hall and again running in slow motion. And within 10 to 15 seconds, there were 10 people around her, and I couldn’t even see her. All I could see was the monitor above her that showed her medical stats. And it felt it felt like a long time. It was probably 30 or 60 seconds, but it felt like a long time. And with Abigail with her brittle bones, you can’t do normal CPR because normal CPR and things like chest compression will kill her. And so you have to be very careful with what you do to try to revive a kid like her when her heart stops.

I was just standing there. I don’t remember breathing, but I was standing there just taking it all in. And after she came back, I walked down the hall, 20, 30 feet down the hall. They had a sort of family room, and it had a couple of chairs, a refrigerator. And I was shaking so badly that I could no longer stand up. I fell on the cold floor. And I was struggling to breathe. I guess because of the adrenaline and the stress of the scenario. I was just taking very quick short breaths, just trying to keep air going into me. And I didn’t know if it was the end for Abigail. And my mom and my in-laws were living at our house in San Antonio, so they were at least in town.

And I called my mom at 3 a.m. and she picked up and I could barely talk. And I said, if y’all want to see her alive, you probably should come to the hospital. Sometimes we need to sink. I had nothing. I had nothing. There was nothing I could do. There was nothing doctors could do. There was nothing nurses could do.

But I remember sitting on that cold floor, not even knowing what to say or what to think, but just praying, God, please help me. I can’t breathe. I can’t stand. I don’t know what I just witnessed. Please help me. Sometimes we just need to sink. And that’s what happens here with Peter. Jesus tells Peter to come to him on the water. Jesus knows that Peter will sink. This is not news to Jesus. Jesus is not surprised when Peter starts to sink. Jesus knows that it’s going to happen. And Jesus knows that Peter will reach out to him to be saved.

Conclusion

Maybe there’s an aspect of your life right now where you feel like you are sinking. You feel like you have no control. There is nothing you can do. There is no solution within your power. You feel like you are helpless and hopeless. You don’t have the ability to fix the thing that’s wrong, and you have no clue how it will work out or if it will work out. Regardless of what you’re dealing with this morning, know that God has allowed you to be in this place for a reason. For Peter. It was to take a scenario he was used to and comfortable with, being in a boat on the sea, and show him how badly he needed Jesus. Even in that time.

Don’t be afraid to get out of the comfortable security of your boat and your life and to trust God to take you through those difficult times. In 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 11, Paul writes to Timothy, beginning of verse 11, saying, The saying is trustworthy, for if we have died with him, we shall also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he will also deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

That will keep God from being faithful. What an incredible fact. That God’s faithfulness to us isn’t dependent on our faithfulness to him. Isn’t that a great thing? Even if we lose all faith, he is always faithful.

Be not dismayed, for I am your God.

I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. No matter what you’re going through or what you’re dealing with, or the difficulty that you may be facing, regardless of the world you know, perhaps being completely turned upside down, regardless of the winds and the waves. Fear not. Because he is right there. If you are not a part of God’s family, if you do not have a relationship with him, you have no saving when you sink. There is no one waiting for you to reach out if you do not have a relationship with God. And if you understand what you need to do to have a relationship with God, to believe him and repent of your sins and to be baptized for the remission of those sins, and you’re waiting, what are you waiting for?

What if you are asked today to get out of the boat and walk on the water? Are you prepared? And if you are a part of God’s family, if you have given your life to him and been baptized for the remission of your sins, and you are living a life of distraction on the thing of the things that are around you must refocus. If there’s any way we can help you this morning, please make it known by coming to the front as we stand and sing.