Many of you might remember the Lethal Weapons movies of a few years back. In these movies there was a good safe cop who did things conservatively, by the book, who wasn’t in to taking unnecessary risks. Then there was the character played by Mel Gibson who was always taking risks. He would jump off of buildings, fight anyone, and do just about anything that involved taking a risk.
Interestingly enough, later Mel Gibson would take a risk of his own. He would risk his own money, his reputation and his status in Hollywood in an attempt to make a film portraying the Passion of the Crucifixion of Christ. Many people warned him not to do it and the nay-sayers warned him that it would fail and it would cost him dearly. No company would pick up and finance the film, so out of his own money, Mel Gibson made his movie. Folks said he was crazy for doing it, but this was something that he felt God was calling him to do, so he put it all on the line, risking a great deal to be faithful to something he felt God was calling him to do. He took a risk, and he has been rewarded for it.
Maybe this morning God is asking you to take a risk. Now it may surprise you, but God does want you to take certain risk. In fact, Not only does He want it, He demands it. In the parable of the talents, the person who was given one talent did nothing with theirs but hid it out of fear, and Jesus said that the master came back and called him a wicked and lazy servant for not taking a risk with it. Lazy we can understand, but wicked?
God has entrusted us with so much and has given us so much, we can’t just sit on it…He expects us to take certain risk for Him. Zig Ziglar once said that it is risky for a plane to take off, but that is what planes are meant to do, and it’s even riskier for a plane to sit on the ground and rust. It’s risky for us Christians to step out of our comfort zones and attempt the impossible for God, but that’s what we are called to do.
We call it stepping out on faith. Now maybe that is easy for you. By nature you are a risk taker, but many of you fall into the category of safety seekers, and that is good, but God calls us on occasion, to step out of our safety zone and take a calculated risk of faith. And maybe after today, you will take that risk in your life.
In our text, we see it had already been a grueling day. The disciples had been ministering all day and were exhausted. They had just witnessed a miracle where Jesus fed 5,000 people with only 5 loafs of bread and 2 fish, and no doubt it was a day of highs and now as the day came to a close, Jesus sends the disciples away to the other side of the shore as He goes to pray.
Now what was supposed to be a simple trip ends up taking longer then they expected. Now I’ve been known to get lost on occasion and when a trip is supposed to only take a few hours ends up taking about 6 hours you start to get a little feisty and irritated, especially if you had already had a long day.
During the fourth watch of the night, between 3 and 6 a.m Jesus began to make His way to the disciples. Now remember, they had been traveling between 9 and 12 hours for what should have been a short trip. The wind was blowing hard against their boat. Their lives weren’t in danger, but they had been blown off course and were probably frustrated, tired, and irritable.
Matt 14:25-26 says that, “During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. (Now imagine the scene, the wind is blowing, its dark, and the disciples are struggling to get their boat to go and they look and they see a figure taking a casual stroll on the water. Now how did they react to this? Verse 26 says, “When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified.”It’s a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear.”
I can’t be too hard on them because If I thought I saw a ghost I’d be scared as well. One Saturday night I came into the church at Longview UMC to practice my sermon, and a church can be a scary place at night when its all dark and you’re alone. I didn’t think anyone else would come in, and I’m preaching then I think I see someone at of the corner of my eye, and so I look and there is Francis Walker standing right there! I started to scream like a little school girl! Now, its not that she’s scary mind you, but it was unexpected. So when I hear the disciples were afraid, I might have been scared as well.
But Jesus calls out to them. Matt 14:27, “But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid." Have you ever noticed the number of times Jesus is telling the disciples not to be afraid. It seems that the disciples are always either scared or asleep. Now this is where we come to the part I like. Peter is going to ask to come out and walk on the water to Jesus, but he is going to eventually sink. Now, most of the time when I hear sermons on this text or commentaries on this passage, I would say about 80% of the time they are negative of Peter. They say that Peter took his eyes off Jesus so he sank, that Peter was lacking in faith, and so on.
Yet I want to applaud Peter this morning because in this passage, Peter did something that the other 11 disciples didn’t do. Peter got out of the boat. Peter took a risk of doing something that he had never done before, something that many would deem impossible, all to get to Jesus. Peter was the only one willing to take that risk.
Now I’ve asked myself many times why the other 11 didn’t try to walk on water as well and I’ve found that the two main reasons that I came up with are similar to the reasons why we fail to take steps of faith in our lives today. The first is that they were fearful. The winds were blowing, the waves were no doubt crashing, they thought Jesus was a ghost and the water was deep! I think the greatest fear they had was that they would fail. They might step out and sink to the bottom. But let me say, I would rather be a failed water walker then a dry boat potato any day.
And many of you might be afraid to take risk in your life because you are afraid you might fail. But the good things in life come only when we are willing to go out on a limb and take that risk. I remember how scared I was when I first asked Denise if I could kiss her. We had been dating for a while, and I had debated it for a while and I was terrified. What if she said no, what if she smacks me, what if, what if. Finally I gathered my courage, and one night when she dropped me off at my barracks, I leaned over and asked, “Denise, can I kiss you?” She said, “Have you brushed your teeth!” No just kidding, she said yes and it was the best kiss I have ever had.
Now many of you are so fearful of taking risk that you never get to experience many of life’s wonders and joys. And there is no telling what God can do through us if we can just overcome our fears and step out on faith for Him. Maybe you have a wonderful testimony of what God has done in your life, but your so afraid of speaking that you keep it to yourself. Think of how many people are missing out on that blessing because of your fear.
I was reading this week about a man named Terry Bradds. Terry Bradds was 25 year old non Christian father who was caught up in the everyday activities of life. His neighbor was faithful but shy Christian man who wanted to invite his neighbors to church but was afraid of what they might say. But one day he got the courage up and asked if his Terry Bradds 5 year old son, Craig, could come to their Vacation Bible School. Terry gave his permission, and that Friday, Craig invited his Dad to their closing program. It was there that Terry began to feel God tugging at his heart, and it wasn’t long until he gave his heart to Christ. Shortly after that, Terry quit his job, went to Bible college, and now after many years, Terry Bradds is a minister in Illinois, his son Craig is a youth minister in Indiana, and his other son is in seminary learning to become a preacher. I tell you all of this because thousands of lives have been touched all because a neighbor overcame his fear and took the risk of inviting his neighbor’s 5 year old son to Vacation Bible School.
So the first reason why they didn’t take the risk is that were afraid and maybe that is where you are at today. The second reason why they didn’t take a risk is that they preferred the safety and certainty of the floating boat to the uncertainty of the water. They were content with the safety of the boat, but look at what they were missing. A chance to walk on the water with Jesus! One person so wisely said it this way, “You cannot discover new oceans unless you’re willing to lose sight of the shore.”
You know football season is right around the corner, so its time I start throwing in some football illustrations. (some of you are saying ugh! Is it that time of year again!) In football, there is a strategy that teams often employ in the fourth and last quarter called the "prevent defense." If their team is ahead, some coaches will shift their defensive and offensive play to an ultra-conservative mode in an attempt to run out the clock and win the game. It’s a strategy of contentment that says we are satisfied with what we’ve done. But quite frequently this "safe" strategy backfires and it can backfire in your life as well.
The church can play prevent as well. We can say lets rest on our laurels and not venture out any more, but this is the surest fire way to close a church. Eileen Guder once remarked that “You can live on bland food so as to avoid an ulcer; drink no tea or coffee or other stimulants, in the name of health; go to bed early and stay away from night life; avoid all controversial subjects so as never to give offense; mind your own business and avoid involvement in other people’s problems; spend money only on necessities and save all you can. You can still break your neck in the bathtub, and it will serve you right."
Next week we will be consecrating our new addition, and I am proud of that building. It is a testimony that this is a water walking church and not a bunch of boat potatoes. It could have been easy for this church to say, “We’ve done enough. Let’s just keep things the way they are.” But this church took a chance, you stepped out on faith, you took a risk because this was something you felt God was calling you to do, and it has been a blessing.
Now Peter took a risk getting out of a boat, but it wasn’t a rash decision, it was a calculated risk. God doesn’t want us to take unnecessary risk, but steps of faith that is based on wisdom and understanding. Now I want you to notice a few things Peter did here. First, Peter sought the will of Christ first. Matt 14:28 “Lord, if it’s you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."
Peter didn’t just hop out of the boat, he sought Christ out first and said You tell me to do it. Whenever you take a risk, the first thing you do even before you do it is that you seek God’s will first. Make sure this is something He wants you to do and not something you think you want to do. I have a twin brother who was a state trooper in Las Vegas. It was his dream job and the pay was real good. But the atmosphere in Las Vegas in not conducive to raising a family. (Go figure!) Last month Larry did something I thought he would never do. He quit his job and moved his family back to Kentucky. I thought he was crazy. I thought to myself, Larry you have a wife, four kids, a hamster, you don’t have a job lined up, you don’t have a house, you just can’t up and do something like this. But Larry didn’t just up and do this. He and his wife had talked about it, they had prayed about it, and they felt confident that this was something that God was telling them to do. So they did it. And it looks like things are going to work out just fine. But it wasn’t a rash decision, it was a calculated step of faith.
Now the second thing that Peter did is that he wasn’t going out there alone. He said Jesus, tell me to come to You! He wanted to make sure Jesus was going to be right there with him. You know, risk are always easier to make when you have someone with you. It somehow helps us to know that we are not alone. Now my girls love to swim, and Carrie (my four year old) has no fear. But Clarissa can be a little bit timid when it comes to the deep end. A couple of years back, we were at a hotel swimming pool and I was down in the deep end, and Clarissa saw me there and asked if she could come to me, and I told her, and she doggy paddled her way to me as fast as her little floaties would let her. When she got to me she let out a big sigh of relief. Now she would have never have done that if I wasn’t in the pool.
When you take a risk that you have prayed about and you know this is God’s will for you, and then you know that God will not leave you alone in that pursuit. My mentor Wil Winemon told me that many times in his ministry, there were times when he felt discouraged and scared, especially when he went into the chaplaincy. But he said that whenever he felt scared or discouraged, he would remind himself that this is what God had called him to do, and he knew that God would always be right there with him.
And the final thing I want you to see here is that Peter knew that reward was worth the risk. Peter might sink, he might drown, yes, but he had the chance to walk on the water with Jesus. Who could pass that up? When I was in the Navy, they taught us to always weigh the risk and reward ratio. If the reward was greater then the consequence, go for it but if not don’t do it. Well here, Peter knew the rewards were great, even if it meant falling to the bottom of the lake.
When I went to my license to preach school, there was a preacher there who had been a lawyer making a 6 digit salary in Jackson who felt his call into the full time ministry. Now he weighed the risk and the reward ratio. He knew that by going into the full time ministry he was going to go from a 6 digit salary to about 20,000 a year. He knew he couldn’t keep the lifestyle he had, but…he knew the reward of preaching God’s word to people would be worth it. And it has been for him.
Now what is God calling you to do today. Is He asking that you risk possible embarrassment by asking that co-worker to come to church with you? Is He asking you to risk rejection by telling your boyfriend or girlfriend that you are going to be faithful to God above all else no matter what? Is He calling you to volunteer for some form of ministry within the church? Is He calling you to give or to commit your life today? What ever He is calling you to do, remember that if you want to walk on the water, you have to get out of the boat. And you may sink, Peter did. But Christ picked him up and boy did he have a story to tell his grandchildren. What risk will you take this morning?
