as we come to God's Word today. Father God, we thank You for Your Word and all that it teaches us, and all of the ways in which it instructs us and exhorts us, and that's our prayer today, now, as we come to Your Word, that we would not just learn its meaning, but that we would be instructed by it, exhorted by it, challenged by it, and that it would continue its good work in us of transforming our lives by renewing our minds. Father, help our faith to increase. Help our submissiveness to you, our trust in you to increase, even as we come to your word this morning. And help that increased faith by the power of your Holy Spirit indwelling in us, by the power of your living and active word abiding in us, Father. help that increased faith to demonstrate itself and to prove itself and to manifest itself in the ways that we live our lives. Father, we love you and we ask that the words of my mouth this morning and then the meditations of our hearts on your holy word would be pleasing in your sight. And we pray all of this in Jesus' great name, amen. So the past few Sundays here in our times together in God's Word, two weeks ago we looked at Psalm 120 and Psalm 121, you remember, and then last week we looked at Psalm 91, and in those passages of scripture there's this There's this abiding theme of finding our refuge in God, finding our shelter in God, putting our implicit trust and all of our hope in Him in a way that manifests itself in the way that we live our lives as we just prayed together here. And all of that's brought back to my mind this very familiar story in Matthew chapter 14, the story of Peter walking on the water. And so I wanted to revisit it with you here today in conjunction with those other passages that we've studied together over the past couple weeks. And as we do, This passage in Matthew 14 brings to mind another great story in Mark's gospel, in Mark chapter nine. You don't have to turn there, because there's really just one main statement that someone makes in that story that I wanna plant in our brains this morning as we continue now to think about finding our refuge, finding our shelter, finding our help, in God and by abiding in Him as we've been learning together. So in Mark chapter 9, Jesus came upon a big crowd of people and the crowd was watching Jesus' disciples have an argument with a bunch of the scribes. And so Jesus asked the disciples, what are you arguing with them about? And one of the men in the crowd who knew exactly who Jesus was says, Teacher, I've brought my son to you and he has an evil spirit in him that makes him mute. He's not able to speak. So the boy was being oppressed by demonic powers so that he couldn't talk. And the spirit would seize the boy so that the boy started thrashing around and foaming at the mouth and grinding his teeth together. And the father, of course, was distraught about that. And he had come and asked Jesus' disciples if they could cast the demon out of the little boy. But they couldn't, they weren't able to. And so Jesus, in Mark chapter nine, exhibits some frustration. with the generation of people that he was living among. Because it was a generation that was characterized by unbelief, by faithlessness. And he also exhibited some frustration with his disciples who were products of that generation that struggled to trust God. But Jesus had called them all out of that generation. And He had trained them up, and He had discipled them, and He had given them the authority to cast out demons, but they couldn't do it because of their lack of trust, their lack of confidence in Jesus and in the authority that He had. and worked through in their lives. And so that's what Jesus in Mark 9, he's rebuking faithlessness, he's rebuking unbelief, he's rebuking weakness of faith, but his rebuke is mostly pointed at his own disciples. He says, oh, faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? And then he says, bring the boy to me. And you gotta love that. Our modern minds don't often have room for Jesus saying stuff like, how long do I have to put up with you people? But that's exactly what he was saying to this faithless generation that he was living in the middle of, and specifically his own disciples, who even though he'd given them the power to cast out demons, weren't able to because They didn't have the faith to pull it off. They didn't really believe in the moment when it came down to it that Jesus's power and authority in their lives could actually make that happen. And so that was Jesus's diagnosis of why they couldn't do it. Because their faith was just not strong. And so he said, bring the boy to me. The man brought his son to Jesus, his mute son. And Jesus asked the man, how long has the boy been like this? From childhood, as a little one, as a toddler. And often he says the demon even casts him into the fire or into the water to try to kill him. And then the man says this to Jesus. He says, but if you can do anything, then please help us. If you can do anything, then please help us. And again, I love Jesus's response. He's always focused on the absolute necessity of faith being the driving force in every aspect of our lives. And so he basically says, if I can do anything, what do you mean if I can? There's no ifs when it comes to what God is able to do, right? And Jesus is the God, man. It's not a matter of whether Jesus has the power and the ability and the authority to cast a demon out. It's a matter of whether or not we believe that. Jesus says all things are possible for the one who believes. And that poor man, whose son had been afflicted since he was a little child, understood. There in Mark 9, he got it. He got Jesus' message. He understood there's no limitation on Jesus' power. The limiting factor here is the quality of my own faith in Him. It's all about trusting Him and His omnipotent power. and His precious and very great promises, and His sovereign providence, and His perfect will, trusting Him for everything, for every aspect of our lives, in every choice, in every circumstance, for every outcome. Life has to be all about trusting Him, because there's really nothing that we can do in this world without doing it through faith in Jesus, and the man got it. And so, and here's the statement, he cries out to Jesus now, these words that we've all hopefully in our faith and in the weakness of our faith, cried out to Jesus at times, and that we must all learn to cry out to Jesus all the time. The man said, Lord, I do believe. Please help my unbelief. Can you find the place in your heart that needs to say that to God every minute of every day? Yes, I believe in you, but my faith isn't perfect, and I even need you for my imperfect faith. I believe, but I need you to help my unbelief. That's the, that's the, thought that I want to govern your minds this morning as we come to discuss and to study together this text in Matthew chapter 14 verses 22 through 33 about Peter walking on the water. And here Jesus is teaching this lesson that we need to trust him implicitly and that we even and especially need to trust Him for the fact that we don't trust Him implicitly, or we don't trust Him perfectly, but He's not teaching that message here with words, He's teaching it to His disciples and to us in action in Peter's life. And this is one of many, many reasons why Jesus is just such a brilliant and fantastic teacher. because he doesn't just teach by telling, by propositional statements. He teaches by doing. He teaches by showing. And everything that he does, all the healings, all the supernatural works that Jesus performs all throughout the Gospels are not just for the sake of curing diseases and casting out demons and having compassion on people. They are, but mostly he's doing all those things for the sake of teaching about who he is. as the Most High God who dwells in human form, and all of the authority that He wields in the kingdom that He has dominion over, which is every square inch, as C.S. Lewis put it, of this entire created order. There's nowhere where Christ is not sovereignly exercising kingship, lordship, and sovereign divine authority. And in this passage in Matthew 14, what he's doing is he's teaching us what it means and what it looks like to be his disciples and people who follow him as the God and the Lord who he is and what that needs to look like in our lives, not just sound like when it comes off of our lips. And the message is this, it's that even though we believe in him, We're gonna need help with our unbelief because there's an awful lot of unbelief in our lives. It's one thing to say, I trust you, Lord. It's another thing to trust Him, isn't it? It's another thing to step out in faith and believe that apart from Him, I can do nothing, but that in Him and according to His power, and according to His presence in my life, there's nothing that He commands me to do that I cannot do, that I cannot endure. But so often our faith in Him is weak. So often our faith in Him is wobbly. And so we say one thing, but then when it comes to putting it into motion, we're not capable of doing it. So Peter in this story started out in faith, right? He got out of the boat. How many of us would have got out of the boat? That takes some serious faith. But then we notice his faith waver. And we notice why. It's because he took his eyes off of Jesus. It's because he started to think more and more about the waves, the circumstances, the troubles, the things that he was afraid of. Then he was thinking about the Lord who has authority over those things. That's when he started to sink. Now, this story appears in three out of the four gospel accounts. Luke's the only one who doesn't record this particular story. But of the three, in Matthew, Mark, and John, Matthew is the only one who records the fact that Peter walks on the water. Mark and John both focus on Jesus walking on the water and coming out to the boat to meet the disciples, but they don't mention Peter. That's a big deal, right? But they don't mention Peter getting out of the boat, but Matthew does. Matthew includes this all-important aspect of the story because Matthew's emphasis in his gospel is not just on the awesome power and majesty of Jesus who can walk on water. That's what captivated Mark and John's minds so much. Jesus is the one who can walk on water. That's the amazing power of His divinity as the God-man. But also, Matthew wants to assure us this same God-man, this same Lord of the universe is able to make us able to walk by faith in His power and majesty through all of the storms of our lives if we will keep our eyes focused on Him. And that's the message here. But the story doesn't start with Jesus and Peter walking in the water, right? In verse 22, the story starts with Jesus sending his disciples away in the boat without him. And then Jesus dismisses the crowd in order to try to get someplace where he could be alone. He'd been trying to do that for a while already in Matthew's narrative of events here in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus had been looking for an opportunity, looking for a place where he could get some alone time, where he could just be away from the busyness and the hustle and the bustle and the demands of the crowds that were always pressing around him and just pray to his God. and also think upon what lay ahead for him and try to process the sorrow and the grief of what his ministry was leading him to on the cross eventually. Jesus needed a place and a time where he could deal with the very human feelings that he felt as the God-man. Fully God and fully man. He felt fatigue. He felt overwhelmed sometimes in his humanness. He felt exhausted. He felt full of sorrow. He felt weighed down because of all of the demands of his ministry and again, everything that the ministry was inevitably and ultimately leading him towards. Just before this passage, Jesus needed some alone time. But alone time didn't work out for him because another crowd of people, this throng of people, came and found him. And instead of sending the crowd away, Jesus had compassion on them. And he started healing them. And he started ministering to them. And he miraculously fed them by multiplying the loaves and the fishes by the sovereign power and authority of God. So now, finally, Jesus does send the crowds away. And he even sends his disciples away in the boat by themselves. And then verse 23 says he heads up the mountainside alone. This is the region of Galilee in the northern part of the land of Israel. Puts the disciples in a boat, sends the crowd away, and then goes up on the mountainside alone to pray. And if we look at the other gospel accounts of this same incident, if we look at what Mark and John have to say about it, we see that not only was Jesus looking for a place to pray, that wasn't the only reason he went off alone. Mark says, in Mark chapter six, that Jesus also went away by himself because just quite frankly, on a basic human level, he needed to get some rest. He was physically, humanly exhausted Mark says that the crowds pressed in on him so often and to such a degree that he and his disciples didn't even have the luxury of being able to eat often times. And so Jesus said to the disciples, you guys need to go find some rest. Go get some food and get some down time. And then that's exactly, Jesus did the same thing himself. Realize that, Christians. Sometimes even the Son of God in the fullness of his humanness needed a break, which means it's certainly okay and it's certainly important for all other humans to be able to get breaks regularly too because our bodies can only take so much before we need a break. And then the other reason why Jesus went to get away by himself according to John's gospel in John chapter six is John says that Jesus perceiving that the crowds were about to come and take him by force and make him king, that's why he withdrew to the mountain by himself. That's what the people, the crowds of people who were around him, that's what they wanted him to do. They said, this is the guy who can heal diseases and cast out demons and perform miracles. What we want him to do is become our earthly king and employ all of that supernatural power against the Roman Empire in order to become our king and deliver us from the tyranny of Rome. But that's not why Jesus had come, right? He didn't come to be that kind of king. He didn't come to wield sovereign power in a military conquest against the Roman Empire. He came to build a kingdom that's not of this world. He came to build a kingdom that could only be built by his sacrifice on the cross, his death and resurrection. And so sometimes he had to get away from these crowds in order to avoid being pulled away from his real and true mission. And he had to send his disciples away for the same reason sometimes so that they wouldn't get distracted from what this was all actually about. Listen to how James Boyce explains it. He says, the crowds were always offering Jesus a smaller version of what the devil had already offered to him in the wilderness. The devil said, all the kingdoms of the world and all of their splendor can be yours. Boyce says all Jesus had to do was bow to popular opinion, just like Satan in the wilderness had asked Jesus to bow before him. In that case, Jesus had spent 40 days preparing in prayer before the devil came to tempt Him. Here, in this episode, He needed at least a few hours. alone with his heavenly father. He needed to pray. He needed to fix his mind and his heart and keep focused on the fact that he didn't come here to be served. He came here to serve. He came here to be the suffering servant. He came here to lay down his life for many by allowing himself and giving himself over to the crucifixion in order to bear our sins. So for all of those reasons, Jesus in this episode, in this moment, sent away His disciples by themselves in the boat across the Sea of Galilee. You guys go get some food, you guys go get some rest, I'm gonna go get some rest, I'm gonna go be with my Heavenly Father in prayer. I'll meet you there. And He Himself prayed from that time. Verse 23 says it's in the evening, right? probably just before dark, that means like maybe 7 or 8 p.m. we could think of in our minds. He prayed from that time until, verse 25 says, until he came to the disciples during the fourth watch of the night. Watches were a Roman system that divided the night hours between sundown and sunup into four watches. And the fourth watch would have been between the hours probably around 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., right when the sun was rising. Think about what that means. That means that Jesus has been praying all night for a really, really long time. He doesn't just go and pray for five minutes. He goes and he prays for seven or eight straight hours, if not more. And then also think about what that means for the disciples. They're out there in a boat on the Sea of Galilee for that same amount of time. They're out there rowing their hearts out all night long. Now normally it wouldn't take that long to get where they were going across the Sea of Galilee. But verse 24 says, a big storm came up. And so the winds were against them. The winds were just tossing this little boat everywhere in the Sea of Galilee and it was being beaten by the waves. They're not going anywhere anytime soon. They're just trying to keep the boat from sinking. They're rowing with all their might all through the night, and that means they would have been completely, by this point, by 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 6 a.m., utterly exhausted, and probably really frustrated, and probably feeling entirely desperate and afraid because they've been striving against this storm with all their human might all throughout the night. They probably think, I'm out of gas here, and I'm gonna die. We're all gonna die. And they're at the end of their rope. Have you ever been there? Striving against the storm, rowing and rowing and rowing and rowing, and you just feel like it's never gonna end, this night, this season of darkness in my life is never gonna stop, and I'm out of gas, and I can't do it anymore, and if I don't die, I wish I could. You ever been there? That's when Jesus came to them. And the reason that that's when Jesus came to them is because his timing is perfect. He came when they needed him the most. He came when they realized there was nothing that they could do to save themselves. He came when they were at the absolute end of their rope. He came when they must have felt like they had lost all hope. Again, verse 25, in the fourth watch of the night, he came to them, and he came spectacularly, walking on the sea. How do you think they felt when they saw that? They're exhausted, they're completely discouraged, they're panicking. The wind and the waves are terrifying them because they feel like they're gonna just succumb to it all and go down to the bottom of the sea And then how would you feel if that was you out in the middle of this lake that's more like an ocean when the storms whip up and you're being slammed around by the waves and lashed by the wind and the rain. You're all alone out there. You're at the full mercy of the storm. You're about to get swallowed up by the sea. Again, you felt like this in your life sometimes, right? That's where these guys were at. And then they look out through all of the pouring rain and they see a man, a human figure walking across the raging water, walking through all those mighty waves. Whoever that is, he's making far better headway against the storm on his feet than we're making together in this boat. And verse 26 says that they were absolutely, they were terrified, they were mortified, they were horrified. Because they didn't know who he was. They thought he was a ghost. I mean, they're already anxious about the storm, and now they thought some apparition has come. Like the grim reapers out there coming for us. Some omen of impending doom. This is it. We're definitely dying now, right? They're freaked out by this picture of Jesus walking on the waves, and so they start screaming, they start crying out in fear. And here's the thing, it's the wrong kind of fear with reference to who it really is out there, right? There is a fear of the Lord that is the beginning of all righteousness, but it's not this kind of fear. This is the wrong kind of fear. But at least they recognized that whoever it was out there, he was far more significant than the storm and all of their current troubles. The mere sight of him overwhelmed their focus on the wind and the waves. And if we could just learn that. If we could just remember that when we're in the darkness, when we're in the wind, when we're in the waves, when we're in the weeds, when we're buried with troubles, if we could just catch a glimpse of Jesus again, in all of his power and all of his glory, and with a fear that is appropriate to who he is and what he's done to redeem us, he would overwhelm. all of our earthly fears and anxieties. So immediately Jesus, he hears them screaming in terror out there because they don't know who it is, they think it's a ghost. Immediately Jesus reassured them that it was in fact him and that they didn't need to be afraid of him in this kind of visceral way that when you're afraid of something it makes you wanna run away from it. There's that kind of fear, isn't there? And I'll tell you this, if you're an unbeliever, that is the kind of fear. If you're in your sins and not in Christ, that's exactly the kind of fear that you would have and should have in the face of the Holy God. You should want to flee from Him as far as possible. But in Christ, in His righteousness covered by His blood, justified by Him, forgiven by Him, reconciled to the Father in Him, with Him abiding in us. The fear of the Lord for the believer doesn't make us want to flee from Him, it makes us want to go to Him. It's that deep feeling of reverence and awe and respect and also delight. that God forges in the hearts of true believers that says he's not something to get away from, he is a mighty fortress to flee to because of how great and awesome he is. So Jesus, hearing his disciples out there in the boat crying out in the kind of terror that wants to run away from something, Jesus says to them, and hear it in a gentle tone because that's what the words reflect, He says, take heart. It is I. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid in this kind of way you are being afraid. You don't need to worry about me. You don't need to fear me. And in fact, he's saying more than that. He's saying, not only do you not need to be afraid of me, you don't need to be afraid of the wind and the waves because I'm the one walking on them. I'm the one who's sovereign over them. I'm the one who's in control of them. Take heart, it is I. Don't be afraid of any of it. And I, the, The words that Jesus speaks, the English words in our Bibles, the translations, they don't do justice to the actual words that Jesus spoke. When Jesus says, take heart, the Greek word there is tharsai. That's the same word that Jesus uses up in chapter 9. You can go home and read that later where Jesus healed a paralytic man and forgave that man's sins. In those days it was pretty much assumed that the kind of paralysis or severe illness that somebody had suffered from all their life from childhood on, that the only reason they were suffering from it in a form like that was because they had been guilty of some kind of sin and they were suffering the consequences of it. And so in Matthew chapter nine, there's this paralytic man laying there, trembling before the Lord, fearful of judgment, because he recognizes who Christ is, and he's afraid that maybe there's gonna be judgment on him, but he's hoping for mercy. And Jesus, in all of his kindness and in all of his compassion, looks at that paralytic man and says, in Greek, he says, tharse teknon. Technon means my little child, like little Arthur up here. Take heart, my little child. I'm not gonna judge you. I'm here to give you mercy. I'm here to heal you. I'm here to make you whole. That's who Jesus is. And that word tharsei, take heart, such a great word. It means, it's rooted in the idea of courage. Courage, have courage. Yeah, the wind and the waves are raging, but have courage. And specifically it means, there's two kinds of courage that the New Testament talks about, and it uses two different words. This one, tharsei, means a subjective, experiential kind of courage. There's another kind. It's spoken of by the word Ptolemois, which is the kind of courage that looks at something that's objectively fearful, looks it straight in the face and then masters that fear. Like if you have a mortal fear of spiders. Tolmois is the kind of courage that goes and picks one up and says, I'm not gonna let this fear own me. I'm gonna master it, right? That's Tolmois, that's the I face my fear and master it kind of courage. But this word, tharsei, the word that Jesus uses, it's not like that. Tharsae is the kind of courage that says, actually, there's nothing to really be afraid of in the sense of the kind of terror or dread that drives you away from something fearful. Tharsae is the kind of courage that says, you don't have to be afraid at all, which is awesome. Because we look at a passage like this and we say, well, what do you mean there's nothing to fear for the disciples in the boat? Jesus, what do you mean don't be afraid because there's nothing to actually be afraid of? Yes, there is, there's a huge storm to be afraid of. And also the fact that you're walking on the water out there kind of freaks us out. But what Jesus means literally is no, no, seriously, you've got nothing to fear because I'm here. Take heart because it's me. Take heart because it's the one who loves you, because it's the one who cares about you, because it's the one who is sovereign over storms like this. And he had already been sovereign over a storm like this in their past experience. And when Jesus says, it's me, The words that he uses in Greek are actually the personal covenant name of God, I AM. Remember in the Old Testament, any time you see the word LORD in all capital letters, it's a translation of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton, YHWH, the name I AM. Well, in Greek here, that's exactly what Jesus is saying, Ego Ami. Take heart for I AM. Take heart, for the great I Am is with you in the storm. Do you remember in John chapter 18 on the night when Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane right before His crucifixion? And then the Romans all came in order to arrest Him. And Jesus said, who are you looking for? Who do you seek? And they said, we're looking for Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus didn't say right here, He said, Ego Ami, I Am. He invoked the great I Am on him. And when he did that, it literally blew them all off their feet and backwards into the dirt. Are you sure you want to arrest the great I Am? I'll let you. But it's only because I let you. Well here, Jesus wields that same name as the most high God who he is, demonstrating his deity, demonstrating his omnipotence and majesty by walking on the water, but he does it not to freak him out, but to bring him comfort in the middle of the storm. Don't worry, there's nothing to fear, the great I am is in your midst. And that brings us to the main point of the story, right? And the main point is faith in the great I am. Faith in the sovereign Lord, which means trust in the God man. We talk a lot about faith, living by faith, walking by faith. And the question has to be, well, what is faith? What does it mean to have faith in Jesus Christ? Well, as you know, faith means a lot more than just knowing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. It means a lot more than just comprehending in our brains and understanding that Jesus came to save us from our sins. What faith means is trusting Him and what He did so much that we lean on Him in tangible ways all the time and commit ourselves to His glory in tangible ways all the time. So when you think about Biblical faith, God-given faith, living faith in Jesus Christ. You have to think about it according to scripture as having three different aspects. And without any one of the three, it's not genuine faith, it's not living faith, it's not God-given faith. The first aspect is faith's, we'll talk about it in simple terms, it's faith's content. That's pretty simple, right? Faith in what? The content of faith, the content of genuine faith, the truth of God's living and active word that he reveals about who he is and what his law is and what his holiness is and the truth of the gospel, who Jesus is, what Jesus did by his death and resurrection in order to save us from our sins. All of that and everything that God reveals all throughout his word is the content of genuine faith that we have to come and understand and know in our minds. But knowing the content isn't enough, right? Even the demons do that, but they're not saved by it. So the second all-important aspect of real faith, biblical faith, is call it agreement or assent. So not just knowing the content of God's word and all about his character and nature and what the gospel really is, but agreeing, assenting to the fact that all those things are true. So I don't just understand that Jesus claims to be the Son of God, I believe. I'm convinced, I live by a conviction that He is the Son of God and that He died on the cross as my substitute and that He atoned for my sin. So the content of faith and then agreement or assent, those are both necessary aspects of genuine faith, biblical faith. Without either one, it's not real faith. But even with both of those, It's not yet genuine living faith. The third aspect is trust. Trust. Trust that drives and defines the course of your life and your decisions and even your desires. That's what trust means, right? The picture of trust, if you're a parent, is standing in the shallow end of the swimming pool and holding out your arms to your toddler who's standing on the very edge of the pool and saying, jump, jump, jump to me and I'll catch you. Do you trust me? And the child says, I trust you daddy. Then you have to jump. If you jump, it means you trust me. If you won't jump, it means you're saying you trust me. It's just lip service. It's just words. Every parent who's ever done this and stood in the shallow end of the pool, arms out, saying, jump, I promise I'll catch you. I won't let you sink. Every parent knows that every time the child is standing there, right? And he's looking at your face, and then he's looking at the water. And then he's looking at your face, and he's wondering whether to trust. He's wondering what to trust. They're not sure. And if they're not sure, and if they're waffling, then while they're looking at the water, they never jump, do they? But if they look you in the eye, and if they hold your gaze, and you say, trust me, I won't drop you. That's when they jump. And when they do, it's because they trust. They don't just know, they don't just agree. Yes, I know you're in the pool. Yes, I know you're strong enough to catch me. I believe you can catch me. Do you believe I will? Then jump, that's trust, that's faith. And based on all of that, this story takes place. All three aspects and nothing less is biblical faith. Faith jumps, faith trusts, faith depends on, faith leans on, faith follows, faith submits, faith obeys. In this story, faith, in the middle of a storm, gets out of the boat. So Jesus said, when they were terrified and thought he was a ghost, take heart, it's I, the great I am is here, don't be afraid. Then verse 28, Peter said, well, Lord, if it's you, I wanna trust. I wanna trust, command me to come to you on the water. And so Jesus said, come. And Peter trusted enough to get out of the boat and walk on the water and come to Jesus. How many times do you tell Jesus, I trust you, but you refuse to get out of the boat? Because you don't trust Him. You trust the boat. You trust your ability to hold on. You've been rowing against that storm all night, and you're terrified that you're gonna sink to the bottom, and yet you think you're safer in the boat than trusting Jesus. How many times, and be honest, every day, many times, I believe, please help my unbelief, but see here all of the aspects of literal, genuine, living faith in Peter. He knew that the person on the water was really Jesus. That's the content of his faith. He assented to that fact that Jesus, the Son of God, who he'd seen heal the sick and raise the dead and already calm the same kind of storm on the same Sea of Galilee already before, he knew, he agreed that Jesus could hold Peter up if he got him out of the boat. but it can't stop there, right? It can't end with Peter saying, Lord, I know you can hold me up in the waves, but you know what, I'm just, I feel, I just feel more, I don't have a piece about it. I feel more comfortable staying here in the boat if it's all the same to you. Now, by faith, Peter trusted his Lord in a way that absolutely constrained Peter's will and decisions and choices in life. And so he got out of the boat into the middle of a pounding storm and raging sea and started to walk to Jesus because Jesus was walking towards him and he believed if he can do that, then I can do that in him. Do you believe that? That the Christ who is in you and in whom you are can enable you to do every single thing that he calls you to do. serve His kingdom in every single way that He's gifted you to do, even though you're terrified and afraid. But, verse 30, but Peter's out of the boat now, Peter's standing on the top of the water now, in Christ, by the power of the great I Am, but when he saw the wind, he was afraid. and began to sink. And beginning to sink he cried out, Lord save me. It was when he took his eyes off of Jesus. It was when he looked away from his sovereign Lord who had the power to hold him up. It was only when he looked instead at the wind, at the waves, and let his heart be more impacted by them than by his God, that's when Peter became afraid. That's how fear works. That's when our belief falters. But Peter's faltered, but it didn't fail completely, right? He started worrying more about the wind than he was trusting the Lord of the wind. But even though he started sinking at that moment, he still knew who to call out to, right? Lord, save me. I can't save myself. I can't get myself out of this one. He doesn't try to swim back to the boat on his own. He doesn't try to somehow push himself back up on top of the waves and stand on his own two feet. He knows that if it's up to him, he's doomed. And in all of his faltering and sort of flailing faith, the last thing he can do is cry out to Jesus, who he knew and believed and trusted was able to save him and care for him. So he did trust Jesus. But on the other hand, his faith was imperfect, wasn't it? It was weakened when his focus shifted to the wind and to the waves. Just like our faith oftentimes falters when the wind and the waves of all of the trials, all of the hardships, all of the sorrows, all of the overwhelming stuff is just ripping at us and burying us. It's so easy for us to look at the hard circumstances instead of at the sovereign God who orchestrates the circumstances, who orders them all for our good. It's so easy to shift our gaze away from Him, look at the waves themselves, and then become overwhelmed with fear and start to falter. and stumble and sink in terms of our faith. But if you do that, and when you do that, because we all do it all the time, it doesn't mean you don't have faith. It doesn't mean you don't trust him at all any more than it meant that for Peter. Look at verse 30 where Jesus sort of scolds Peter. It's not because Peter didn't have any faith in him at all. It was because in that moment, when Peter was more concerned with the problem than he was confident in his Lord, in that moment, Peter's faith became small. He doesn't say, you have no faith, you unbeliever, and let him sink. He says, you have little faith. You have faith, your faith is just little. Why do you doubt? And then he pulled Peter up, and together they got into the boat, and immediately the wind ceased, and everyone in the boat praised and exalted and glorified Jesus as the God who he is, saying, truly you are the Son of God, which means truly you are the great I am, the almighty, omnipotent God-man, God the Son in human form. So there's a lot, see, there's so many profound lessons for us to learn from this story, right? what real faith is, who real faith actually trusts, and what it looks like to actually trust Him. Here's the two things to hang on to as you walk out of here today from this story. First, think about what it is that causes faith to become little in your life. And then think about what it is that causes faith to become immense and big. When faith is small and fear is great, it's always when we take our eyes off of our God and focus more on the trouble. And in order to keep focused on God more than the trouble, you have to cultivate the habit of abiding like we learned from Psalm 91 last week. and keeping your mind focused on His Word and His truth and in communion with Him constantly, unceasingly, before the storm comes. Because you're certainly not going to cultivate that habit in the middle of the storm. It's really hard to stock up in order to survive an earthquake in the middle of an earthquake. It's really hard to fireproof your house when it's on fire. Do it first. Prepare in advance. See? When our faith is small and fear are great, it's because we have not cultivated an abiding confidence in the greatness and the presence and the loving kindness of our God. It's always when in our weakness we conclude that the winds are bigger than him. That's why we fear. And so the thing we have to learn how to say is truly you are the son of God and we got to do it before the winds and the waves come. We've got to keep learning to look to Jesus in the Word, in prayer, in worship, in fellowship, always constantly fixed on Him and on His nature. The bigger He is to us on a regular basis, the more exalted He is in our minds and our hearts, the more consumed our hearts and desires are with Him and His goodness and loving kindness, then the smaller our troubles will seem and the less we will fear. Because He's constantly saying to us, take heart, I am. You've got nothing to fear. And then the second lesson for us to take away today is this, how does God teach us these things? How does the great I Am teach us to keep our eyes locked on Him in faith? Yeah, we need to prepare in advance, but God knows that we're pretty foolish a lot of times and complacent and we don't do that and so, He gives us things that prepare us. Hebrews 12, verse seven, written to suffering Christians, written to people who were being persecuted, written to people who were faltering in their faith and looking more at the howling winds of their trials and circumstances than they were looking at the majesty and supremacy of Jesus. They were sinking. And the author of Hebrews said to them, it is for discipline that you have to endure. because in all of this suffering, God is treating you as sons, as beloved little children. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline lovingly? And the word discipline in Hebrews there doesn't mean punishment, angry, lashing punishment. It's the Greek word paideia, which means instruction, loving teaching. The author of Hebrews, said at the beginning of chapter 12, that same chapter, we've got to learn to run with endurance, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Now, just a few verses later in Hebrews 12, he says to them, when you suffer, remember, it's not because God despises you. It's not because God doesn't care about you. It's the opposite. It's because He loves you and He wants to train you. He wants to teach you. He's treating you as a child. And he uses these trials in order to instruct you. God uses the wind. God uses the waves. He doesn't give them to us to harm us. He gives them to us to teach us because he loves us and he wants us to learn. What's he want us to learn? He wants us to learn to walk by faith and not by sight. He wants us to learn not to lean on our own understanding. He wants us to learn to trust him to make our paths straight. He wants us to learn to get out of the boat and to trust Him no matter what, instead of saying that we trust Him, but really, we're just cowering in the boat. Yeah, I trust you, Jesus. I'm not gonna come anywhere near you, but I trust you. Trying to feel safe and secure in something other than Him. He wants us to train, He wants to train that out of us. Because the thing is, when life is going along nice and smoothly and everything is peachy and everything is fine, we do have faith in him. We genuinely trust him. Not just for our salvation, but for our lives here in this world. But sometimes it's easy for our faith to become shallow and abstract and theoretical and distant. We trust him but we also tend to put a lot of trust in ourselves and our abilities and our strength and our wisdom and our understanding. Maybe we put our trust in our comfort. And in comfort we get complacent and we trust in self more than we lean on him. And so what does God do when we get complacent? Well he kicks up the winds. He causes storms, not to harm us, not to punish us, not to torment us, but to teach us and to instruct us and to strengthen us and to help our unbelief. He wants to teach us that really we're not as strong as we think we are. We're not as capable as we think we are. We're not actually capable of anything apart from Him. We're not safe anywhere but in Him. And our pride doesn't want to believe that. So he kicks up the storms in order to call us to himself in faith because it's during the storms that we learn that in reality, we've got nowhere else to turn but to him. Spurgeon said this as we close here. about Peter in this passage here in Matthew 14. He said, on the water, listen to this, on the water, in the storm, Peter was nearer to his Lord when he was sinking than when he was walking. Isn't that awesome? I hope we all remember that. On the water, in the storm, Peter was nearer to his Lord when he was sinking than when he was walking. It's when Peter was in trouble that he had nothing else that he could do but to call out to Jesus and that's when he was closest to Him. That's why God lovingly lets us learn from the winds and from the waves that He ordains. And again, when the disciples of Jesus learned that and got that, when they learned to face the fearful trials and the cross-bearing, cost-counting realities of discipleship by locking into faith in Him and knowing and believing and trusting that He's stronger than the strongest storms, then that faith moved them into all kinds of fruitfulness and persevering, God-exalting service and ministry. And worship, truly you are the Son of God. So the winds are strong, but never out of His control, and always according to His plan. And He is stronger. The waves are big, but He is bigger. So always look up from the water. And always look into the face of your Father. And always say, God, give me assurance in the things that are unseen, and then get out of the boat. And do what glorifies God, even if it terrifies you. Do what pleases Him, even if it's uncomfortable for you. And He'll hold you up. and He'll never forsake you. Always pray, Lord, I believe, please help my unbelief, amen? Let's pray and sing to our God. Our Father, we have much to learn, not just in knowing, but in trusting. And so we ask that you would impress these words of your Holy Word upon our minds and upon our hearts. Embed them deeply. Convict us deeply. Encourage us powerfully. And help our unbelief. Help the weakness of our faith. Help the littleness of our faith. and fix our eyes upon Jesus Christ, the author and the perfecter of our faith that we might continue to run the hard race that is set before us with endurance for the sake of your kingdom and your glory and your righteousness. This we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Let's all stand and let's sing with courage and with conviction that he will hold us fast. Let's praise our God.