Trading The Natural For The Supernatural Series

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A new Barna research study where more than 5,000 were interviewed found that while a majority of Americans identify as Christians, only a minority are "practicing Christians." In fact, as many as 73 percent of the Americans say they are Christians, but only about 31 percent of the Americans said they attended church at least once a month. Only 34% claim to have read the Bible in their spare time at home over the last week. And an even smaller percentage (17%) had attended Sunday school or a small group Bible Study. In 2017 alone only 31% of Americans identified themselves as Christians who were “born-again.” Saved.

Many are willing to wear the label, but very few even know what it means.

This month we are studying what the Bible says in regards to being saved in a Sermon Series that I’ve titled “The harvest is passed, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”

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Please Turn in your Bibles to... Matthew chapter 14

I’ll have to admit, this is definitely one of my favorite stories in the Bible and I know that I refer to it often. But I’m hoping that today we can see this scripture in a new and fresh way that speaks to our hearts. This is the story of Jesus walking on the water.

Now this is without a doubt a true story. Not an allegory. Not something made up for spiritual interpretation. I believe this happened, absolutely. But I do also believe that this story has significant spiritual truth and application for us. So it’s not just a neat, amazing story to tell our kids. This has something that is very relevant and applicable for our lives today.

So as we read and study this story in our Bibles today, we are going to have certain parts of the story represent certain aspects of our lives. Number one – the boat represents what is natural. You got that? The boat in our story represents what is natural for us. Okay?

The sea, the waves, and the wind all represent what is against us, what we struggle with, what is keeping us from moving forward. Okay? So these two things: The boat = what is natural for us, and the wind and the waves = what is against us. Let’s look at this together…

Matthew 14:22-33 New Living Translation (NLT) says…

22 Immediately after this, Jesus insisted that his disciples get back into the boat and cross to the other side of the lake, while he sent the people home. 23 After sending them home, he went up into the hills by himself to pray. Night fell while he was there alone.

It says immediately after this. Well, immediately after what? Jesus had just fed 5,000 men plus women and children with only 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. He’d spent the entire day ministering to people, healing the sick, preaching the Good News, and he’s tired. He stays behind to dismiss the crowds and he tells his disciples to go on ahead of him. He’ll catch up.

Most of us would probably have gone somewhere to get some rest after all of that, but Jesus knew where strength came from and so he went up on a hill and found a quiet place by himself to pray. Seek His Heavenly Father. Disciples are on the boat. He’s on a hill.

Disciples are rowing, trying to get home for a good night’s rest. Jesus is praying.

I might make this point before we go on: Even though Jesus was fully God (the Son of God), he was also fully man. He was God in flesh. And so it might seem strange that God the Son needed to pray to God the Father.

My daughter asked us recently how Jesus could be God and God’s Son at the same time. How can Jesus be God and God be God too? That’s a tough one. I don’t think any of us can fully understand the trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – three in one). It’s a confusing concept. It’s a spiritual reality that is very difficult for us to understand from our human perspective. But probably the easiest and best explanation I can give is - Jesus needs his father like any child needs a father, for love, for direction, for protection, and fr strength. In his humanity he relied on his Heavenly Father (as we should) to do what could be done only in the super-natural. The Bible says in Philippians 2 that Christ emptied himself or made himself nothing not taking advantage or insisting on his divine privileges, but humbled himself and became a servant obedient to God even to death on a cross.

And that may be hard to wrap your brain around completely and that’s fine, but just remember Jesus was tempted in every way … every way as we are yet was without sin. How did he do that? Well, he was God. Okay but as a human, he relied on God the Father through prayer.