Dwight Lyman Moody lived toward the end of the 19th century. He was an American evangelist and publisher who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts (now the Northfield Mount Hermon School), the Moody Bible Institute and Moody Publishers, all of which are still in operation today. He was a major player in the early development of the YMCA, and he preached to hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. He also gave us the four-colored version of what we know as “The Wordless Book” today.
Henry Varley, a very intimate friend of Dwight L. Moody in the earlier days of his work, loved to tell how he once said to him: “It remains to be seen what God will do with a man who gives himself up wholly to Him.” When Mr. Varley said that, Mr. Moody said to himself, “Well, I will be that man.” When we look at the life and ministry of Mr. Moody there is no doubt about what God will do with a man (or a woman) who gives himself (or herself) wholly to Him.
Mr. Moody once said to his friend and co-laborer R.A. Torrey, “If I believed God wanted me to jump out of that window, I would do so.” Anyone who knew him believed that was an absolutely true statement.
That kind of a walk of faith is rare, but it really shouldn’t be. If a person really invests the time and energy to get to know Jesus and become familiar with His voice, walking with Him – no matter where it is or what the conditions – will be the most natural thing in the world.
Today, we are going to look at Peter, a man who knew and listened to the voice of Jesus Christ and took a little walk with Him on a dark and stormy sea.
Whenever we come across the keenly familiar, it is always a great challenge to try and look at it in a fresh way.
The passage we have before us today is just such a story, one that I have taught much and referred to often. We all know this story and are acquainted with most of the details. So, the question is, how can we get a fresh look at something so well-known and familiar to us?
First, we need to make note of what we know we know. We know a lot, actually:
• We know that Jesus had performed the miracle of feeding five thousand men, plus women and children, from five barley loaves and two fish only a few hours before this;
• We know that Jesus has now been alone on the mountain praying for several hours;
• We know that Jesus has sent His disciples on ahead of Him in a boat;
• We know that a major storm arises when the disciples are a very long way away from shore;
• We know that it is in the wee hours of the night;
• We know that Jesus comes to the disciples, walking on the water;
• We know that the disciples are frightened and think that they are seeing a spirit;
• We know that Jesus tells the disciples not to be afraid because it is Him, not a spirit;
• We know that Peter says, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water;”
• We know that Jesus does so;
• We know that Peter gets out of the boat and steps out onto the storm-tossed sea;
• We know that the other disciples stay in the boat, still trying to keep it afloat;
• We know that Peter starts walking toward Jesus on the massive waves of the sea;
• We know that Peter gets his eyes off of Jesus and onto the storm and that it frightens him;
• We know that this causes him to begin to sink;
• We know that Peter cries out, “Lord, save me!”
• We know that Jesus reaches out His hand and rescues Peter;
• We know that Jesus chastises Peter by saying, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
• We know that Jesus walked back to the boat with Peter;
• We know that the wind stopped and the waves calmed as soon as they got into the boat;
• We know that all of the disciples worshiped Jesus and said, “You are certainly God’s Son!”
We could discuss any or all of these things at length and be here until the wee hours of the night ourselves. What I would like to talk about today is the four things that came to mind while I was making this list from the Scripture text. Of the four things that I would like to talk about today, three are observations and one is a question.
First, Jesus purposely sent His disciples out onto the sea to face that storm.
Second, Peter was the only one who showed any interest in getting out of the boat.
Third, Peter waited for Jesus to tell him, “Come,” before he got out of the boat.
Fourth, why was it so important for Peter to get out of the boat at all?
There is a lot that has been and can be taught about this story. For our study today, we are going to focus on what I believe to be the foundational premise for the story and that is the walk of faith.
After all, isn’t that what Peter’s little walk with Jesus on that stormy night was – a walk of faith?
Jesus and Peter walking on the water is probably one of the most preached and most mis-preached passages in all of the New Testament. I have heard it used to get people motivated to become involved in ministry or church work that they otherwise wouldn’t even consider undertaking.
I have heard this story used to promote the “be all you can be” approach to the Christian life. I have heard it taught to get people to take great leaps of faith and to believe God for great things.
This story has been used to motivate, chastise, inspire, reproach, encourage and manipulate. What the study of this and any story in the Bible is supposed to do is help us to see Jesus more clearly and teach us how to respond to what we see.
Let’s look at the four points I mentioned and see where they lead us. You can decide for yourselves if I accomplish what I have said we should accomplish in any study of the Bible.
The first point, that Jesus purposefully sent His disciples out to face the storm without Him, is one that used to bother me a great deal. In some ways, I supposed it still does. The verse says, “Immediately He made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side, while He sent the crowds away.”
He “made” the disciples get into the boat. The word for “made” in the Greek is the word anagkazō, and it means, “to necessitate; to constrain, to compel.” What that means is that getting into that boat and crossing the Sea of Galilee became a necessary thing for them to do because He was urging them, compelling them, persuading them to do so.
Luke uses this word in Acts 28:19 where he quotes Paul as saying, "But when the Jews objected, I was forced [anagkazō,] to appeal to Caesar, not that I had any accusation against my nation.” It is also used in Luke 14:3 about the servants of the man who gave the great supper whom he told to “compel” people to come in.
The idea here is that they didn’t want to leave without Him, but He “compelled” them to do so. This is significant. There are times in our lives when we may feel that God is compelling us to go somewhere or do something or say something and we have the feeling that He isn’t going to be with us in it. We feel as if He is abandoning us to the situation. The primary reason we feel that way is that what He is asking us to do is risky, scary or it doesn’t seem to make sense to our way of thinking.
“How did I get in this mess when I was doing what I was sure God wanted me to do?” Ever felt that way? Then you’re in good company because I am sure the disciples were wondering that very thing that night as they rowed and fought that storm that night. I would not be surprised to learn that they wondered why Jesus had sent them out into the storm in the first place. I have felt that way many times myself. My own doubt and fear have caused me to stay out when I should have stepped out in faith.
Now, intellectually, those of us who are believers know that He is always with us and that He never abandons us. But, there are times when it appears that He is anything but close and that we are facing something all alone and we become afraid, even fearful. Our hearts tell us something quite different from what our minds might say to us.
The disciples knew that they were physically leaving Jesus behind. He was compelling them to do what they did not want to do; He was insisting that they do it without Him. He was giving them no reason for it and was giving them no guarantee of when they would see Him again. He wasn’t even giving them any kind of idea of what they were supposed to do when they reached the other side or of what the outcome would be.
As believers, we never have to face that – not really. There are times when Jesus tells us to go somewhere, to do something, to say something, or to give something that causes turmoil inside of us and we can’t make head nor tails of why He would be compelling us to do whatever it is. That turmoil is what causes us to feel that Jesus isn’t with us because we figure that if Jesus is with us, then we won’t have any turmoil.
This story should disabuse us of that notion. This story should help us to see that there are times when God in His wisdom, in His grace and in His love sends us into the turmoil on purpose!
Our fleshly perspective tells us that turmoil is bad and only peace is good. We are quick to jump on the verse that says, “for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints (1 Corinthians 14:33).” Now, granted, we may be confused in or by our turmoil, but confusion and turmoil are not the same thing.
Am I saying that all turmoil is from the Lord? Well, is He sovereign or is He not? Is there any aspect of our life that is not under His Providence? Then the answer is, “Yes,” all turmoil is of the Lord – at least it is of use for His purpose and to His ends.
Even if the turmoil we face is the result of our own choices and actions, God has still chosen to allow it in His sovereignty, so we are to face it. Life as a believer is a walk of faith, after all.
This is, I think, a key ingredient to the walk of faith. It is easy to “walk by faith” when there are no waves, no storms, no danger, no potential for great pain or loss. But that really isn’t a walk of faith then, is it?
The African impala can jump to a height of over 10 feet and cover a distance of more than 30 feet straight ahead. Yet these magnificent creatures can be kept in an enclosure in any zoo with a 3-foot wall. The animals will not jump if they cannot see where their feet will land.
The verse that comes immediately to mind, of course, is 2 Corinthians 5:7; “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
From God’s perspective, His purpose in our lives is not to protect us from the turmoils and storms of life but to teach us to be calm and confident through those turmoils and storms because we know that He is with us. We aren’t supposed to have to know what the end result is going to be – it is supposed to be enough to know that we are His and He is with us.
We are to be able to say with th3e psalmist, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; They rod and Thy staff, they comfort me (Psalm 23:4).”
So often we see the peaceful shore as the goal. We see it as the end-purpose of us going through the storms of life. We need to understand that sometimes – yes, even often times – from the perspective of our Savior, the storm itself is the goal.
See, He is training us for the right now, not for the future. We are to see Him right now, in the midst of the storm. We are to see Him walking across the waves, no end or shore in sight – just Jesus walking on the water. He is to have our full and undivided attention and loyalty.
That is the walk of faith, and that is the walk that Jesus compelled His disciples to begin making that night. He wanted them to know that they could count on Him to walk across the top of the storms, the turmoils, the troubles, the chaos and the fear in their lives and that they could put their trust in Him.
Peter got it. Peter was the only one who got it. And that is the second point we want to discuss today.
In microcosm, we see the principle of “many are called but few are chosen” played out in this story. This is a recurring theme in God’s dealings with the human race, especially those who are “called by His name.”
One of the significant examples of this in the Old Testament is the story of Gideon and the soldiers he uses to deliver Israel from her enemies, and it is recorded for us in Judges 7. Let’s look at this for a moment.
When we read this story, we see that there was an initial interest of 32,000 men. By the time God is through weeding out those who are not suited for His purpose, 300 remain. It is this small number, this remnant of the faithful, that God uses to His glory.
Peter pushes off shore with eleven other men who were as personally called and chosen by Jesus Christ as he was. How is it that in the midst of the storm, Peter is the only one who says to Jesus, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water”?
There has been a lot of speculation about this. From looking at the text and reading the parallel passages in Mark 6:45-51, and John 6:15-21, the most obvious thing is that the other eleven disciples kept their focus on what they knew, what they were familiar with. They kept applying themselves to the best of their ability to deal with the situation they were in as best they knew how. They seemed to give no thought to Jesus or to what He was up to or that there might be another way.
Peter’s focus immediately turns to Jesus. He turns His attentions and his energies away from the task at hand and focuses on the person of Jesus Christ. You might ask, “Are you saying that I should let myself get distracted from my task, distracted from my goal and take the time to focus on Jesus in the middle of the hardest and most intense part of the work?”
Yes, I am. I believe that Peter got it right – he turned his eyes upon Jesus and listened to what Jesus’ voice told him to do. In fact, he even asked Jesus for specific directions so that he would know for certain that it was Jesus he was facing.
Peter was following the example of Jesus Himself. Where had Jesus been for the last several hours while the disciples had rowed half-way across the Sea of Galilee? He had been up on the mountain, praying.
Jesus had withdrawn from the miracles and the people and the demands for attention and had taken Himself off to be alone with the Father.
The man known as the Father of our nation, George Washington, was a very devout man and followed the pattern set here by Jesus. According to Robert Lewis, Washington’s nephew and private secretary during his first term as the President of the United States, it was Washington’s custom to enter his library between four and five o’clock in the morning to read a chapter in the Bible, and, with the open book before him, to kneel down and pray earnestly to God, committing himself and the young nation to Divine care and guidance.
It was also his habit at the close of the day that, when the work was done, he would kneel in prayer, returning thanks for the blessings that had been received, and give himself up to heaven’s watch-care for the night. He was even known to cut short late-night meetings in order to see to his time of evening devotion and prayer.
Jesus had established this same pattern in His life. We are told several times that Jesus “ arose a great while before the day and went off to the mountain to pray.” Jesus was the closest person to the Father that the disciples knew. Peter was just as scared, just as unsure as the other eleven disciples were. Instead of depending on what he knew and what he could do, he turned his eyes on Jesus and sought Jesus’ will for that moment.
Something in Peter drew him away from his norm and to Jesus Christ. This is the thing we must all learn to do in our own hearts and lives if we are to truly walk by faith.
In our own walk of faith, we need to be seeking Jesus every moment of every day. You have heard me say this before – and you will hear it again, I am sure – there is nothing in the life of any believer that Jesus Christ doesn’t place His finger on and say, “This is mine.”
What is the foundation of your life? What is the foundation of everything that is in your life? What is the foundation even of life itself? The answer is to be found, first of all, in the first four words of the very first verse of the Bible: “In the beginning God…”
Are you supposed to do what you know all the time? Are you supposed to go only with the known and the comfortable? Are you supposed to lean on your own insight and understanding?
What does Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us? “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” Peter got it right.
That brings us to the third point I brought up at the beginning of our time together today and that is that Peter waited for Jesus to tell him, “Come,” before he got out of the boat.
It is night and the disciples cannot see much at all of what is going on around them. The sky is dark, the stars they should be able to navigate by are invisible, the waves are violent, the wind is loud and it is all they can do to keep the boat moving. All of a sudden, they see a dim something moving toward them across the top of the water.
Now, I don’t believe that any of us, had we been in the same situation, would have assumed anything other than what they assumed. None of us would have assumed, “Oh, it must just be Jesus, walking across the tops of the waves in this storm that is trying to kill us.” To imagine that we would suppose that is presumptuous, I think.
No, we would have been afraid, too, if we’re honest. The text tells us they were “battered by the waves” (verse 24). The word there in the Greek is basanizō, which literally means “to torture”. They were being tortured by the waves.
Ever felt tortured by something in your life, even since coming to know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and Lord? Then you know what the disciples were experiencing, what they were feeling. These were seasoned sailors. These were men who were accustomed to dealing with the radically different temperaments and conditions of this body of water. For them to feel tortured means that this storm was one of the most violent and dangerous storms that any of them had probably ever seen or experienced.
What shape are your emotions in when you face violent storms, dangerous trials and scary situations in your life that you feel totally unequipped to handle? What goes on inside of you when you feel overwhelmed and unprepared for what you are facing? Are you calmly confident and reasonable? No – me neither. It is becoming more so for me more frequently, but I am not at all where I need to be.
To walk by faith at this juncture means to be able to ask Jesus what to do and wait for His response before we do anything. Waiting on the Lord takes on a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?
G. Campbell Morgan put it this way: “Waiting for God is not laziness. Waiting for God is not going to sleep. Waiting for God is not the abandonment of effort. Waiting for God means, first, activity under command; second, readiness for any new command that may come; third, the ability to do nothing until the command is given.”
The walk of faith that Peter shows here is this kind of waiting: he is in danger; he is afraid; his own efforts are barely keeping him afloat; he becomes aware of Jesus’ presence and nearness; he turns to Jesus for instruction on what to do; and then he waits for Jesus to respond.
One of the most remarkable aspects of this part of the story is that Peter, the man we know as impulsive and restless, is suddenly cautious and calm. This is the Peter who, when he doesn’t really know what to say, has something to say anyway. This is the Peter who cannot stand the thought of being separated from Jesus when Jesus tells His disciples that He is going away and that where He is going, they cannot go.
This is the Peter who reprimanded Jesus for saying He was going to die at the hands of the religious leaders, the Peter who lashed out and cut off a man’s ear to defend Jesus during His arrest, and the Peter who jumped out of the boat and ran onto the shore carrying several hundred pounds of wet, wriggling fish in order to reach Jesus.
Yet, in this situation, at this unfamiliar time and place, Peter waited on Jesus.
Peter got it right: the walk of faith requires that we wait patiently and calmly for the Lord’s instructions before we move, and then when the word comes, to immediately obey.
And that brings us to the fourth point and the question that I asked: why was it so important for Peter to get out of the boat at all?
The answer to that question is what really defines the walk of faith for us. The walk of faith doesn’t make sense in the every-day world. The walk of faith doesn’t look to the eye of the flesh as if it is wise, prudent or even a good idea. The walk of faith seems the opposite of strong and resourceful and independent and prudent.
Peter had to get out of the boat to show us that the walk of faith is really all about obedience. It is about seeing with the eye of our heart, the eye of our spirit, instead of the eye of our flesh.
I used to have problems getting my son to clean his room. I would insist that he, “Do it now,” and he would always agree to do so, but then he wouldn’t follow through – at least, not right way.
After high school, he joined the Marine Corps, which is where he is now. When he and I were on the plane together coming home for his leave after Boot Camp, he said to me, “My life makes sense now, Dad. Everything you said and did when I was growing up now makes sense. I really, really understand.”
“Oh yeah, Dad,” he added. “I learned what ‘now’ means.”
The walk of faith is a life of “now” obedience. When we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” what are we saying? How is God’s will done in heaven? Immediate obedience with gladness – so, as in heaven, so on earth. When Jesus Christ tells us, “Do this,” we are to do it now, and do it with gladness. That is the walk of faith.
And that is why Peter had to get out of the boat. He had asked Jesus to instruct him to come to Him. Now, I don’t think I would have asked for that. I probably would have scooted over to make room for Jesus to get into the boat next to me, encouraging Him, “Here, Jesus. Sit next to me!” But I really doubt that I would have said, “Lord, if it is You, command that I come to You on the water.” Would any of you have thought of that?
Then where do you think the thought came from? Me, too; I believe that Jesus used His knowledge of Peter’s impulsiveness to teach this lesson and to teach it so powerfully.
Jesus knows each of us just as well as He knew Peter. Jesus was well aware of Peter’s inclinations. He was also well aware of Peter’s love for Him and his desire to be with Him.
Remember when we were studying the Twelve Disciples back in Matthew 10? We saw that Jesus was often literally bumping into Peter because he was always so close, always as near to Jesus as he could get.
When Jesus said, “Come”, Peter’s love for Jesus compelled him to put his trust in Jesus and climbed out of that boat despite the wind and the waves. He didn’t let his fear or his circumstances stop him. He obeyed Christ’s call, and out onto the water he went.
Peter showed true faith by his obedience because faith is always expressed by obedience to God. Disbelief is always expressed by disobedience. Peter put his confidence in Christ’s Word, and didn’t look at his own inability to walk on water to influence whether or not he would step out onto the water. He simply obeyed the voice of the one he loved more than life itself.
What is it in your life that makes no sense that you feel compelled by God to do? What are you supposed to be obedient to that scares you, intimidates you, is objectionable to you, confuses you or makes no sense to you? Are you willing to love Jesus more than you love life and more then you love anyone else in your life?
Is there any place in your life where you know that you are walking in disobedience? Then you are not walking in faith. If you have any hope of God walking with you and blessing your life, you had better get out of the boat and begin walking in obedience.
I want to close with a simple little poem by Glenda Fulton Davis, who is the project coordinator and lyricist for Hugs for Children. The poem is entitled, “It’s Not Always Easy”:
It’s not always easy to smile and be nice, unprepared
When we are called to sacrifice.
It’s not always easy to put others first,
Especially when tired and feeling our worst.
It’s not always easy to do the Father’s will.
It wasn’t so easy to climb Calvary’s hill.
But we as His children, should learn to obey;
Not seeking our own but seeking His way.
It’s not always easy to fight the good fight.
But it is always good and it is always right!
Let’s pray.
