Text: Matt 14:22-33, Title: When Doubt Replaces Trust, Date/Place: NRBC, 1/6/13, AM
A. Opening illustration: "May God grant his true servants grace to await life-revolutionizing conversion power
as their desired goal! May churches pray till the earth is swept with powerful preaching of the Word that
searches men, breaks hard hearts, and carries with it the Spirit of regeneration, repentance, and faith! Let us
petition the sovereign throne of our holy Lord until we receive from him those most magnificent works of the
Spirit - the bowing of hearts to his Lordship, the renovation of character, and that turning of the world upside
down which savors of the abundant fruits of the Spirit!" -Walt Chantry
B. Background to passage: Coming off of a large section of teaching in chapter thirteen, Matthew clues us in
on Jesus’s cousin John the Baptist’s murder and Jesus’ travel through and rejection in his hometown. Then
comes the account of the feeding of the 5000. So the disciples just witnessed Jesus take five loaves and two
fish and feed a multitude. The main point of these miracles is to convince the disciples of the deity of Christ.
But when the crowd wanted to take Jesus and make him king on the spot, He sent the disciples out of the
temptation.
C. Main thought: I want to spur us on to a robust, vibrant, visionary, real-life faith and walk with God.
A. Obedient Faith (v. 22)
1. The baseline faith is obedience. That is what you do when you follow a rabbi. Their job was to walk as
closely as they could to their chosen rabbi. And this is what the disciples were doing in this first verse—
Jesus told them to do something, and they immediately went and did it. The language insinuates that this
was something that they had to be forced to do; not as though they were unwilling, just that they would
have rather been with the king when He was crowned. This gives more force to their leaving as instructed.
This sheer obedience is coupled by a trust in the goodness of the One giving the commands, and goodness
of the purposes of the commands.
2. Story of Abraham or Noah or Gideon
3. Illustration: a large number of Roman Catholics believe that you can disagree with the pope and still be a
good catholic, one writer spoke of it the other day like he awaits a clear instruction of lifting his right ring
finger, and when he gets it, he doesn’t ask why, but just lifts. "The place of security is not (necessarily)
the place of favorable circumstance, but the place of obedience to God's will." –MacArthur, SO gets calls
from parents/grandparents whose children refuse to go to school. Some say that once they are that age,
you have lost them. But Uncle Sam can bring a child in line after a few weeks of boot camp. You cannot
stay in the army and continually disobey your superiors.
4. We must start here. When doubt replaces trust, we don’t do what we are told. The question is whether we
will submit to a master. The prerequisite to this occurring is God’s graciously working in our lives that
we might see the need for and the appropriateness of submission to this master. And as well as a decision
that we make in the moment, it is a decision that we make beforehand. This precludes rationalization of
disobedience. We all look for ways out of things that we don’t really want to do. Most of us could use
a lesson or a reminder of absolute obedience. If you were convinced of the leading of the Holy Spirit
to begin a ministry, would you begin to make preparations? If the Spirit tells you to give, do you get
out your wallet? Satan is usually there to help us rationalize why we shouldn’t. We must resist him by
practicing immediate obedience. The scriptures give us commands that we fail to practice regularly. We
must recommit to obedience.
B. Vulnerable Faith (v. 28)
1. This is a faith that is based on knowledge and expectation of God. MacArthur calls it an “act of affection
built on confident faith.” This is also an indication of the safety that the disciples felt around Jesus,
and a possible reason that they might have been reluctant to venture into the sea without him. Peter
believed to be walking in the water during a raging storm was safer than being in a boat with several other
experienced mariners and fishermen. Can you put yourself in that scenario? And that Peter initiated the
plunge.
2. Acts 21:39,
3. Illustration: the value of a pearl, “ Better to love God and die unknown than to love the world and be a
hero; better to be content with poverty than to die a slave to wealth; better to have taken some risks and
lost than to have done nothing and succeeded at it.”-- Erwin W. Lutzer, The founder of IBM Thomas
Watson says: "The way to succeed is to double your failure rate." Or as Thomas Edison said "There is
only one good idea in 100 so I want to discover the 99 failures as quick as possible." Here is a personal
evaluation question: Do I view failure as an opportunity for growth in the kingdom or as a personal
indictment? Just think about these things for a moment. Every 9 sales calls will only bear 1 sale. It takes
9 times of hearing the gospel in a variety of 6 mediums before someone typically responds to Christ. Do
you realize that 6 successful people have 9 times more failures than unsuccessful people. Roughly 60%
of all basketball shots made don’t go in. 25% of all batters make it to first base. In an oil company, only
10% of oil wells drilled hit oil. For actors, only 1 out of 30 auditions turns up in something that is of value.
Two out of 5 investments are winners. John Maxwell says it this way: We need to take success and failure
concerning ourselves much less seriously and take God much more seriously. We need to seed a risk
taking mind set. We need to constantly be planting seeds that will develop a mindset that is willing to take
risks.
4. When doubt replaces trust, we don’t take risks. Do you feel the safest around Jesus? Would you dive into
a dangerous situation if you knew Jesus was there? How is your expectation level upon Christ? When
you pray, do you think that he will answer quickly or in a mighty way? Most of our lives don’t involve
a lot of risky ventures for the kingdom. We like to keep it nice and safe. Comfortable projects don’t
do much to magnify Christ because of His power. Don’t view risks at obstacles, but as opportunities.
We hear a lot about comfort zones, almost to where it is cliché, but the truth is, we will not experience
the power of God until we decide to move out of what we have always done. To reach our city, our
neighbors, our families, our world, we must be willing to take risks in faith. We stand at the edge
of a spiritual cliff that if we go over without a plan, millions will perish. We cannot pass too many
opportunities, as risky as they may be, before we pass up our last one. We must ensure that were are
serving God’s purposes with the body. We must cast out doubt and expect God to work in our midst. Our
church is faced now with opportunities to step out in faith, will be embrace it, or watch it pass by?
C. Adoring Faith (v. 33)
1. This is a faith that is convinced in the presence of the Divine. Again, the point of these miracles is to
demonstrate the deity of Christ. The bible speaks about our coming into a relationship with him as seeing
glory in the face of Jesus. They saw who Jesus really was when he fed the 5000 then walked on the water.
They were amazed, and they worshipped. The word means to fall down upon the feet of another and
demonstrate proper respect and reverence and honor.
2. 2 Cor 4:6,
3. Illustration: “We need to let go of our intellectual idea of worship and realize there is more to worship than
a sermon; we have to let go of our evangelistic notion of worship and reckon with the fact that worship is
not primarily directed toward the sinners who need to be converted; we must let go of our entertainment
expectations and remind ourselves that we are not in church to watch a Christian variety show. We have
gathered together in worship to be met by God the Almighty. God, the Creator of the Universe, the One
who sustains our lives, our Redeemer and King, is present through proclamation and remembrance. He
wants to communicate to us, to penetrate our inner self, to take up residence within us. And, as we go
through the experience of meeting with him in this mystical moment of public worship, we are to respond.
But response is not just singing a hymn, not just saying a creed, not just saying a prayer. Response,
from the very beginning of worship to the end, must be a powerful inner experience of actually being in
the presence of God. When we sing a hymn or say a confession or prayer, we are not singing or saying
words, but expressing a feeling, bringing our souls, truly responding and communicating to the living
and active presence of a loving and merciful God.” –Robert Webber, Worship is a Verb: 8 Principles of
Transforming Worship
4. When doubt replaces trust, we don’t achieve the highest goals. We are created to worship. We exist to
worship. The enjoyment of God, especially corporately is a primary purpose in life. If there is a lack
of expectation when we come into this place, then we will note a lack of His presence. Just like every
other aspect of our Christian life, worship is by faith. And when we see Christ and all his beauty, worship
is like automatic. We are wired to worship beauty, whether it’s that of another person, of a flower, the
Grand Canyon, or the ultimate beauty in Christ. But if we come, or rather walk through life as though
the supernatural is out of reach, we will stand and lift our hands in emptiness, and the ecstasy that comes
through experiencing God in worship will not flow in our midst. See Him, Reach Out to Him, Worship
Him, Be Set Ablaze By Him!
Closing illustration: John Leonard Dober and David Nitschman are names you may not readily recognize.
John was a potter and David a carpenter. Ordinary occupations. Extraordinary men. They are men who
left the security of their jobs and families in Copenhagen to become the first Moravian missionaries in
1732.
B. Recap
C. Invitation to commitment
A.
Additional Notes
Is Christ Exalted, Magnified, Honored, and Glorified?
