Harbor Church - Mid City

Mt. 14: 22-32 (Making Life Count—Peter Part 3)

Mid-City Sept. 27, 2009

3 Weeks of Peter & getting out of the boat.  Here is why. Week 1 you are sitting down and clutching the seat and you hear the call to get of the boat; week 2 you begin to stand up; week 3 we’re about to have a bunch of men and women going overboard. 

The last 2 weeks we’ve mentioned this 5 fold pattern that Ortberg points out that is repeated throughout Scripture in many of the men and women who have made their lives count.  (1) The call, (2) fear, (3) reassurance, (4) decision, & (5) Result:  Changed Life.

This week we’re going to look at the results of staying in and getting out of the boat—part 5.

(1)  Results of disobeying the call & staying in the boat

We’ll start with the negative—the results of disobeying the call & staying in the boat.  Now I am going to give you a best case scenario and then a worst case scenario for staying in the boat.  First, let’s begin with the best case scenario of disobedience.

Best case scenario—You’re a spectator.  There are 11 spectators in the boat with the one water-walker.  The invitation to come, though in response to Peter’s request, was there for all.  Do you really think that Jesus would have let John sink if he jumped out of the boat with Peter.  No.  All 12 disciples had the chance to experience the power and presence of Jesus in a way that would forever change them.  Only 1 did.

Now let me give you a little example of spiritual spectating look like.  Many of you don’t know this.  I am about to shock you—you’re in a Presbyterian church.  Yep, it is true.  Don’t leave yet.  I want you to conduct a little thought experiment—Imagine the stereotypical Presbyterian and the stereotypical charismatic.  Now the stereotypical Presbyterian is a spectator when it comes to things like miracles, signs and wonders, healings.  Some Presbyterians have just dismissed these things all together—they don’t even want to spectate.   People often refer to them as the frozen chosen.  They are so chosen—predestined—that they end up being frozen as spectators and not really involved in the work that Jesus is doing in the world.

Now, on the other hand, the stereotypical charismatics can be spectators of the Presbyterians in some regards as well.  One of the things that Presbyterians have historically done really well is that they have a very    high view of Scripture.  They love to read the Bible; there is a rich tradition of great thinkers like Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, BB Warfield, who really value thinking hard and thinking well and thinking deeply about how Scripture applies to all of life and ministry and worship. 

So while charismatics are participants in the high energy, extraordinary signs and wonders and miracles, they can be spectators when it comes to the careful and deliberate study of God’s word so that enables you to develop a theological foundation that will really carry you through the tough stuff in life. 

So, here is what I am proposing.  A 3^rd way.  My hope for Harbor Mid-City is that we can be the first charismatic Presbyterian church in the country.  You with me.  See I want us to be players, not just spectators, who are experiencing both the power and presence of Jesus in                 stereotypically Presbyterian and stereotypically charismatic ways.  We are Charismatic in that we are Spirit-filled followers of Jesus who are participants in, as Jesus said, doing even greater things—healings, miracles, and the like—and at the same time, we Presbyterian in that we live and breathe and order our lives by His word.  There is a theological depth & power to our lives.  We are neither spectators of the word of Jesus or the work of Jesus, but are participants in both.

WORST CASE SCENARIO OF SPECTATING:  Now, let’s consider the worst case scenario of being a spectator.  See in this particular case the consequences for failing to get out of the boat were not, as far as we can tell, terribly severe.  But make no mistake about it.  Every time Jesus calls you out of the boat and you say, “No, I am quite comfy here and will stay, there are huge consequences to your disobedience.”

CS Lewis writes of the consequences this way,  “every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a Heavenly creature or into a hellish creature.

Lewis is saying that each time Jesus calls us to something, we have a choice.  We can obey, get out of the boat, & in doing so we become  a little bit more like Jesus & in harmony with Jesus—he calls it more heavenly.  We experience more of His power and presence and joy and peace and righteousness that flows out of what John 15 calls abiding in Him.  Yet, Each time you disobey the call and stay in the boat, you become a little more fearful, more self-interested—Lewis calls it more hellish. With each choice you move in one direction.  No choice is neutral.

Now if you choose to disobey Jesus and stay in the boat, 1of 2 things will happen.  Hebrews 12 tells us that what God does is that he acts as any loving father does when his son or daughter disobeys.  What do parents do when their children disobey?  If you love your child, you discipline then to help them learn right from wrong. 

The alternative to God’s discipline is much worse b/c it means that you aren’t a son or daughter, but rather are a spiritual orphan.  For those who go all of their life rejecting the call of Jesus to get out of the boat and come to him, then, at some point, God says, “As you wish.”  To pick up on Lewis, he puts it this way.  “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.”  This, my friends, is the reality.  At some point God says, “Thy will be done.”  I have been calling you to me all my life.  You have rejected the call, you want nothing to do with me, you don’t believe that I exist.  As you wish—thy will be done, and he allows you to stay in your boat heading to a place devoid of His presence, the place the Bible calls hell.  Friends, our choices are real.                       

(2)  Results of obeying the call & getting out of the boat

So, we’ve looked at the result of disobeying the call to get out of the boat, now let’s consider the results of obeying the call & getting out of the boat.

(1)  Faith is strengthened=Peter walked on water.  When you get out of the boat, you faith will be strengthened.  Period.  Can you imagine what this did for Peter to walk on water, even if it was for only a few seconds.  Here he is doing something that can’t be done.  I don’t know about you, but I water-walking is in the category of things that would build my faith.

Look at how it does. 2 chapters later in Mt. 16, Jesus asked his disciples who people said he was and Peter, fresh on the heals of walking on water, blurts out in v16, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon (Peter) son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.  And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.  I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” 

Jesus said, his identity was revealed to you by my Father.”  Now how was it revealed.  Well, certainly, one of the ways that it was revealed to Peter was through his life experiences, through things like walking on water. 

Some of you are here and your just not sure about Peter’s conclusion, that Jesus is the Son of God.  Part of the problem may be that you have never had a faith-building experience of Jesus like Peter had in walking on the water.  So, if you are here and this is one of your objections, then try this.  Now, let me warn you, what I am about to encourage you to do is incredibly dangerous.  It isn’t for the faint of heart.  Say this incredibly risky prayer, “Jesus, if you are real, will you give me an experience of your presence?”  And just keep praying this prayer until he answers.  He will—He says if you knock, He’ll open the door.

Now, let me address those of you who are followers of Jesus.  Two things.  First of all, Once you trust Jesus and step out of the boat in whatever way he is calling you to and experience his power and presence, you will be changed just like Peter was changed.  Your faith will be strengthened just like Peter’s was strengthened.  Stepping out of the boat to love your neighbor and seeing your friend come to Christ—that changes you.  You experience His saving power.  Trusting Jesus to get out of the                  boat of conflict avoidance in your marriage and risk some extremely turbulent waters for a time because you know that Jesus is calling you to intimacy in your marriage, not coexistence.  That changes you—it strengthens your faith. 

But here is another guarantee—you will sink.  Why?  B/c your Peter, not Jesus, & your faith will be lacking at times just like Peter’s faith.  Look at v31, “You of little faith, why did you doubt.” 

Peter has a faith problem.  He is a follower of Jesus who lacks faith.  And this isn’t the only occasion.  He is so confident of who Jesus is in ch 16, but then finds himself denying Christ 3 times when another storm rages.  Another faith problem.  I don’t know about you, but this is incredibly comforting to me.  If the rock upon which the church is built had doubts and lacked faith, then is it any surprise that we do as well.

Anastasia put this well when she and I were talking not too long ago.  She said that all of our journeys with Jesus are filled with fits and starts.  I really like that term—fits and starts.  I looked it up in the dictionary and it means to have “a sudden flurry or burst of activity.”  Isn’t that it—we burst out of the boat, respond to the call of Jesus, then it gets hard.           Old sin patterns rear their ugly head.  Wounds that we thought were healed reopen.  The wave of financial stress, that we were walking on top of, seems to suddenly be sucking us under.   We too, like Peter, lack faith & sink.

The question is what do you do about it.  Follow Oprah’s advice and just keep telling yourself, “I am a person of great faith.”  This doesn’t work. 

But I have gospel to bring to you.  The good news is that the quantity of your faith doesn’t matter.  Jesus said in Mt. 17, just a little later, that even a mustard seed of faith is enough.  No matter how small, no matter how pitiful—any faith, if it is in the right person, is enough.  This is so critical my friends.  B/c I talk to so many Christians who beat themselves up over feeling like they don’t have enough faith and they are thinking in terms of quantity.  You need to erase that from your minds b/c measuring your faith in terms of quantity is unbiblical.  All it can do is harm you b/c it will lead to spiritual pride and cause you to look down on all those other poor people who don’t have as much faith as you, or spiritual despair as you look up at the spiritual giants and think, “I can never be like them. I don’t have that much faith.”

OBJECTION:—but isn’t that what Jesus means when he says to Peter, in v31“You of little faith.”  No.  It isn’t.  Richard France, a commentator of Matthew, puts it this way.  He points out that Matthew is using one of his favorite Greek words here, the same word that he used in 6:30, 8:26, 16:8, 17:20 “in all of which it denotes rather unbelief than inadequate belief).  So France points out that every time you see Jesus say something like, “Oh you of little faith,” what he means is that at that particular moment the problem is unbelief, not inadequate belief.  you put your faith in something other than him.  It wasn’t that you just didn’t have enough—but rather it was that you transferred your trust from Jesus and to something or someone else.  You were faithless.

Example.  When you get married, you pledge to be faithful to one another.  When a husband cheats on his wife, he is unfaithful.  It isn’t that he has too little faith in his wife.  At the moment of his affair, he is unfaithful—he lacks faith in her altogether.  Rather, he is putting his faith in another person to bring him what he needs at that moment.  He doubts the sufficiency of his wife—I need her as well.

This is why Jesus follows up his comment about Peter’s lack of faith by saying in v31, “Why did you doubt?”  Literally, doubt here means to be “divided in two.”  Peter was divided in 2—one hand outstretched to Jesus, the other reaching down to brace his fall.  And, ultimately, He transferred his trust from Jesus to himself and he figured that he would need both hands to swim. 

Such is our plight.  We’re going along great, full of trust and faith in Jesus, and then……we wake up, and the day starts, and it gets hard. Our boss is on us; the kids are screaming; deadlines are near; I have got to make it happen.  We, like Peter, doubt, or are divided in two, and put our trust in other people and things beside Jesus.  We’re faithless & we sink, over and over again like Peter.

Well, when you sink, rather than chanting, “I am a person of great faith,” you repent.  You acknowledge your lack of faith, that you were divided and doing the one arm out thing and finally just took both arms and all your trust in yourself.  This, my friends, is the way to walk in faith.  It isn’t to chant or try harder, it is to come back to Jesus.  

B/c in Jesus you are both rescued & filled with faith.  Rescued, b/c on the cross, Jesus reached out to His Father with both hands.  Not with one to heaven and one to earth.  Yet, for the first time, his outstretched arms of faith were left wanting.  The rescue never came, precisely so that God could rescue you & me from our faithless, doubting, & divided hearts.

And when the rescuer comes, He fills us with His faith.  A faith that never doubted.  A faith that wasn’t divided.  A single-minded, single-hearted faith.  It all happens through repentance & faith in the rescuer, Jesus Christ.

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