“PETER”
TEXT: MATTHEW 14:22-32
Palm Sunday, April 4, 2004
This morning we complete our series on the disciples. It is probably fitting that we are dealing with Peter on Palm Sunday because Peter was the kind of disciple that was closest to Jesus. He was with him from the very beginning; and he followed him all the way to the end. He followed closely behind Jesus. He was there when Jesus was arrested, and he came to Jesus’ defense, unlike some of the other disciples. He trailed behind Jesus all the way up to the area where he was tried, and he witnessed part of it. He was the first disciple to the tomb. [Of course, John said he was there first, but Peter technically was inside first]. So it is probably fitting to talk about Peter on this Palm Sunday, the beginning of the celebration of Holy Week, in which we follow Jesus from his entry into Jerusalem to the cross, and ultimately to the resurrection. Peter was the disciple who was Jesus’ most intimate friend, his closest ally and partner.
[I have to come to my defense here because I have preached on this passage two times this year, and I am going to do it one more time. I tried to avoid it, but honestly, Matthew 14 is simply the best passage for illustrating the points I want to make about Peter’ life. To me this passage typifies Peter’s life in general. It really does describe Peter at his best and sometimes at his worst.]
Reading Matthew 14, here is what it says. You have heard it before, it is Peter and Jesus walking on the water.
Immediately Jesus made the disciples get in to the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
“Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
What qualities stick out about Peter? One quality I really appreciate about him is that of all the disciples, he really wanted to know Jesus. You might say, Well how do you know that? If you read all the passages on Peter, you will discover that Peter asks a lot of questions. He has his hand up all the time. Now, what do you know about a person who always has their hand up in class? Now be nice. Either they know the answer and they are trying to look good, or they want an answer and they really want to know. That is Peter’s case. He doesn’t have the answers, but he really wants to know. He wants to know who this Jesus is.
Peter wasn’t always like this. In fact, the first time you really encounter Peter is in Luke 5. I get the impression that Peter wasn’t much of a church-goer at that time in his life. Jesus is preaching all day, and usually, when Jesus preaches all day, he begins in a synagogue so it is the Sabbath. He continues on throughout the day, and where is Peter when Jesus is doing all of this preaching? Is he in the crowd listening? No, he is not. What is he doing? Well, he is at work.. He is on the shore mending his nets. He is not too interested in this religious stuff, this preaching stuff. He’s got better things on his heart and on his mind. There were churches in that day, but somehow and some way it just didn’t reach him. He just saw it as irrelevant, not really important, not addressing the real issues of his life. It didn’t really speak to him. So at some point in his life he just kind of said, Thanks but no thanks. I really can spend my day better working and making a little money, getting ahead in my life.
Then one day he meets this Jesus whose words stir him, who captures his imagination and his heart, who speaks as though he’s been peeking into his life. It hits in many different places and different times. He is drawn to Jesus. The more he gets to know about him, the more he wants to know, and he keeps asking and asking and asking. He has an unquenchable thirst for God. In Matthew 15:15 he asked, Tell me about this parable of clean and unclean, I don’t understand it. In Matthew 17:24 he asked on the issue of forgiveness, How many times did you say? Give me just the minimum. 490! Are you kidding me? In Matthew 19:27 he asked about the question of faith. What is this religion stuff? What’s it going to get me, and not just for the future, I want to know what this religion stuff will get me for the here and now as well. What’s in it for me? In Mark 11:21 he asked about the parable of the fig tree. What does it mean? In Luke 21:41 he asked who Jesus was referring to when he said that we should be watchful. In John 12:41 he asked Jesus where he was going and why Peter couldn’t come. In Acts 10 God gives Peter a vision, he drops his blanket. I mean it’s a guy’s paradise. You think Atkins created the all-protein diet? God dropped his blanket-all the meat. All these types of meat on the blanket and he said get up and eat. I mean it’s a man’s paradise, am I right, an all meat diet? Atkins didn’t have anything on God. Peter asked what the meaning of this is, and then two guys come knocking on his door and he discovers the meaning of this vision.
Then, here is Jesus walking on the water and he wants to know, Is this my imagination or is this for real, and Jesus who are you really? I wonder, does that describe you? Maybe you have had a Peter-like experience, in that religion and church has really disappointed you. It really hasn’t met your need. It really seems unrelated to life, and at some point in your life you checked out. God wasn’t all that important. There seemed to be better things to do with your day and work was one of those. But there is something missing, something gnawing, something gnawing in Peter’s soul, something gnawing in your soul that is unquenchable, that’s bothering you, that’s stirring you.
I find it interesting that the disciples are superstitious. At first they think it’s a ghost - a common belief in those days; the people were very superstitious. Even if you weren’t very religious, you were very superstitious. In fact, it parallels our own culture. The more secular we become, the more superstitious we become. Why is that? I think the reason is that even though we try to squelch the belief in God, the belief in the spiritual, even though we want to deny it sometimes, deep down internally we know better. We know there are unseen forces at work and it comes popping out in many different ways. It came popping out in Jesus’ day and in our day, in the sense of superstition.
What are superstitions? Think about it. What are superstitions? Of all times, people are the most superstitious right now during baseball season. Just watch the players, the ritual and the routine they go through in order to get a little bit of luck. You’ll discover how religious people can become on Monday if it comes down to the final free throw in the NCAA championship. You will see people who have never prayed before all of a sudden fall on their knees. People who have never been in church, as that final free throw is attempted to be made, all kinds of things will happen, rituals and repetitions. Why? Because deep down there is some belief that there is some unseen force that’s behind it all that will give them the luck, make the basket and their team will win, or the other team will miss it and our team will win.
Deep down in us all, whether we want to believe it or not, we believe that there are unseen forces and we are right. That unseen force is God; it’s Jesus Christ. He is the answer that met Peter’s needs in his life. When he went looking and went searching, he discovered God and Christ; it filled him and he became a follower. Jesus said, Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find.. Knock and the door will be open to you. I like the second verse. The door will be opened for everyone, not just the religiously zapped, those with religious consciousness. Everyone who asked, received. You want to know God? Everyone who asks will get that answer. Everyone who seeks will find. Everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Have you asked? Have you sought? Are you knocking? God will reveal himself to you and you will have no doubt as to who he is. He will fill your life; he will fill the void that he filled in Peter.
Peter is also a good example for all of us as Christians. How do you grow? You grow by seeking, by asking questions, asking questions in Sunday School, asking questions in covenant group, asking questions of your pastor, and asking questions as you study the Bible. Don’t simply look at what it says; ask the question: Why is this being said? Why is this here? Be inquisitive. You know as a culture we are inquisitive about a lot of things. At one point we were inquisitive about who shot JR. We are inquisitive about who is going to win the championship Monday. We are inquisitive about how my stock is going to perform or what the hot stock is; how am I going to make some money; or what’s happening in the world? Be more inquisitive about spiritual things as well because as you seek, you will find the answers to your life.
Another quality that we see in Peter (a weakness) is that Peter is way too impulsive. He reacts before he thinks, and it is always getting him into trouble. It gets him in trouble here. He says, Jesus is it really you; if it is tell me to come on out. He is not thinking. He gets out in the water and then it begins to kick in. Then he begins to think, wait a minute, people don’t walk on water. The displacement of a person is not as great as the displacement of the water. Buoyancy has to do with placement. I am not a physicist, I didn’t really look it up, but I know buoyancy has to do with displacement, not density. He wasn’t going to displace enough water. What happens to Peter? He goes down. He begins to drown. He reacted, but he didn’t think too much. Then he began to think, but in the wrong way. If he really believed in Jesus and who he was, he would have believed that Jesus would enable him
But he reacts, and he doesn’t really think of the ramifications of his actions. Earlier he confesses that Jesus is Lord. He confesses that Jesus is the Son of God. In fact, in one gospel, after he confesses that Jesus is Lord, Jesus said, Okay here is what I am going to do. I am going to Jerusalem, I am going to die, I am going to be crucified, and I will rise again. In Mark 8:31-33 Peter begins to rebuke Jesus. He takes him aside and rebukes him. Now that doesn’t fit his confession. He said, You are the Son of God, he means you are God. Well, you don’t rebuke God. You do not tell God what he is going to do. You don’t tell God that he doesn’t understand what he is doing. Peter reacts, but he doesn’t think.
In Gethsemane Peter responds. They are going to arrest Jesus. Peter does something quite stupid. He is a fisherman. He is not a trained professional killer. What does he do? He whips out a knife, this little pocket knife. He tries to take on a whole battalion of trained soldiers. Peter, you don’t take out a pistol around an army of people. He is so awful a spearman that he misses the guy’s entire chest, which is where you go for; he barely nicks his ear. He is not thinking very rationally. When he comes to the issue of taxes he responds to the question, does your master pay taxes? Peter says, Sure we pay the temple tax, and Jesus calls them aside and says, Peter you don’t really know what you’re talking about. Don’t you understand the ramifications? If we pay the temple tax, who is the temple tax paid to? It is paid to God. How can God pay God? If I were to pay it, it would be a denial of who I am. That is why Jesus didn’t pay it. Peter didn’t know it, he didn’t understand. He responded and he wasn’t thinking.
After the resurrection they are in a boat and they are fishing. He discovers it’s Jesus on the shore, and what does he do? He jumps out of the boat and he sinks. I was wondering whether or not he was trying this water walking thing one more time -there goes Peter again. There he goes again and he’s swimming. He’s swimming to shore. He would have been there faster in the boat.
Peter, in Acts 10, gets this great vision about God accepting the Gentiles, so he goes and ministers to Cornelius and Cornelius’s family and they receive the Lord. Then you hear in Galatians 1 that Peter is with the Galatian Christians who are Greek or Gentile, then Jewish people came around, and all of a sudden he denies even knowing these Greek people. It kind of reminds us of his denial of Jesus. He’s inconsistent. What you discover in Peter, and what you discover also in our own lives, is that Peter does not have much depth. He is a little shallow in his spiritual life. He is inconsistent. At times he is hypocritical and sometimes he is just plain stupid, and sometimes, is we are too in our Christian walk. Sometimes we are shallow. We don’t have much depth, we are inconsistent, sometimes we are hypocritical, sometimes we are just plain stupid in what we do, and the cause of that in Peter’s life is the same cause as in our lives: he is talking when he should have been listening. He responds when he should have been reflecting.
Has Peter described you? Are you a little impulsive? Do you act before you think? That can get you into a lot of trouble. Car salesmen love you though. Car salesmen love to see you coming. When you say, I don’t care what Consumer Report says, I don’t care about miles per gallon. Oh just listen to that engine. I don’t know about engines but it’s a pretty car. I don’t know if I can afford it but I love this car. I just have got to have this car. I find that a lot of times in young couple’s lives who come for counseling and they are always in love, aren’t they? You were too. They can’t wait to get married and they can’t wait for smoochie face. (That’s what we call it in our house). They want to get married and it seems like it’s always a rush. We need to slow down, because 50% of the time we are wrong. We just make bad decisions; and if you are living together, 60% of the time you simply are wrong. You married very badly, it wasn’t a good decision. How do we protect ourselves from these bad decisions? We slow down, that is why we have counseling, and it is a way of slowing ourselves down, and thinking about it, getting outside the emotions and reflecting on whether this really is a good decision for me.
It’s important for us to do that in every decision we make. There is a reason why marketing people don’t want you to think. There is a reason why you see an ad in the TV and they say buy right now, call us in the next eight minutes and we’ll give you [fill in the blank.]. They start adding things on. Why do they do that? Because they don’t want you to think, because if you think, you won’t buy it 80% of the time. If you think more than 24 hours about it, you won’t buy it. That means 80% of the time it would have been the wrong decision to make by acting impulsively.
We were just at Strawbridge’s yesterday, Clover Day. That just kills me, today is the last day, 40% off, don’t wait another moment. Why do they want you to do that? Because they want you to buy impulsively, they don’t want you to think about it, because if you think about it, you slow yourself down, you realize that you really didn’t need it. A lot of people are asking, Well how come you are not buying this?
People here say, Let’s hurry up and get ourselves an associate pastor. Again, it’s the sense of the impulse, get out and get someone. It would be a bad decision in that if we hire poorly, it will cost the church a lot in ministry. Again, if you want to avoid troubles like we see in Peter’s life, and we see in other people’s lives who act impulsively, it’s important for us to slow down, take some time to think, pray, meditate, be more intentional with what we do. Carl Jung says “Hurry is not of the devil, it is the devil itself”.
Richard Foster says, “Our adversary uses three major weapons on us today: crowds, noise and hurry.” A long time ago my wife and I, before we had children, decided that as parents we did not want to be our kids’ chauffeurs because what kids need more than a chauffeur is us. As parents our job is to build people, and when you build people, that’s hard work. It’s through time and thought and the daily interaction with their parents that character in children is built and values are caught and faith is passed on, so we decided to keep things slow in our family and to be very intentional in our actions. We do that with every aspect of our lives
I encourage you to take 10-20 minutes a day and slow yourself down, think about it, meditate, seek God’s counsel. One time a week, that is why God built it into our schedule, one time a week to slow down, check our compass and make sure we are on the right track, on the right road. I encourage you once a year, take some time, take a day and reassess your life, maybe get away from it all, reassess your life. What are your goals? What are your life goals? Are you reaching them, and if you are not reaching them, what are the barriers? What do you need to change in your life? That may sound impractical and some people say, That is kind of out of touch pastor, but actually meditation and slowing ourselves down is the one thing that can sufficiently redirect our lives so that we can better deal with human life successfully. It will help give us perspective and guidance.
The last quality I like about Peter is his willingness to try new things. He was a risk-taker. He was adventurous in spirit. That is something I am trying to instill in my children. You know it is hard enough to get children to try a different vegetable, let alone different foods. Am I right? Every year I try to get a new ethnic food. Last year it was Jamaican food. Try something different! God is like that. God wants us to try different things. God is adventurous. I mean, why did he create 4000 species of frogs? I mean a green one is good enough, isn’t it? But there are 4000. What is that? God loves variety. God loves adventure. God loves taking some risks. God likes doing things differently now and then.
One day he invites someone to go walk on the water with him. Who does it? Peter does. I’ll try it Pastor Jesus. I don’t know how I am going to do it but I’ll try it, I’ll give it a whirl. And so what, he failed. He learned something as a result. He learned that sometimes you have just got to trust Jesus’ words and not think too much. Sometimes he learned to keep his eyes on Jesus the entire time and he realized that nothing is impossible to God. Nothing will be impossible for him to do as long as he relies upon God’s strength for his life, so he learned a lot of things. He learned some things that none of the others in the boat, who remained there, learned. So whether he succeeded or he failed, he learned and he grew in his faith.
It is earlier in Peter’s life Jesus called Peter a rock. Now if you read the gospel you discover that Peter is nothing like a rock. He can’t withstand the testing of a little girl at one time, but he becomes a rock. He becomes a rock because he takes risks for God. He pushes the barriers of his fate and, as a result, he learns and he grows and he develops the faith that enables him later on to preach to a crowd of people at Pentecost, and 3000 people are converted. He stands before the Sanhedrin, the same Sanhedrin that he couldn’t even get to, he couldn’t stand the scrutiny of a little girl, he stands before their scrutiny and he testifies boldly as to who Jesus is. In jail the night before his own beheading, which had just taken place the day before with James, expecting to die, what does Peter do? Well, he is sleeping peacefully. Before his Roman executioners, when Peter is crucified he does not plead for his life, he does not plead for a quick and painless death, he only says one thing, Please do not crucify me like Jesus because I am not worthy of dying like him. Please hand me upside down. What a rock.!
How did he become a rock, and how will we become a rock in our faith and in our life? By trusting God and obeying him. It begins with simply trusting our salvation with him, but it continues as we trust our life with him, our finances, our death and dying, and moving on to our world view, our morals and our ethics, our life style or relationships, and ultimately, to our gifts and abilities. The key to growth and the key to all growth is trying new things, pushing past the barriers. We do it as children, as young people. You begin with just flopping around on the floor. You push the barrier and you get up crawling. You take a risk again, and you get up on your feet; you fall down, but you keep on going; and after a while, you begin to walk; and after you begin to walk, you begin to run; and after you begin to run, you begin to leap. You know little children, they leap off of things!
How do you learn to walk? By pushing past the barriers that exist in your life. How are you going to grow in your faith? By pushing past the barriers in your life, taking risks, challenging yourself with God’s desires for you. He did with Peter. He helped Peter become a rock. This impulsive, inquisitive, adventurous man who at one time saw no use for religion in his life, who instead thought work was more important, became a religious man, became a Christian, became a person who walked with Jesus, became one of the 12 who walked with Jesus, became a man who walked with Jesus on the water, and became a man at the end of his life who walked with Jesus in the air and to the kingdom of God. You want to be like that, to have that kind of confidence, I encourage you to put your faith in this one who saw in Peter this potential to become a rock. He sees it in you as well and he will make it so.
[Let’s pray.]
