Faith – Abiding in Christ | Matthew 14:22-33

INTRODUCTION

Today I am going to speak on faith.

We continually talk about faith in our Christian life but what does that mean?

What are the different facets of our faith?

What does it mean to believe and trust in Christ?

And What does it mean to cast ourselves upon him?

Is faith something that we can come up with rational explanations of because there are times when the Christian life goes beyond reason?

We are considering a very familiar story today of Jesus walking on the water and Peter attempting to walk on the water as well. There is a great lesson that we can learn from this passage in regards to the experience of believers.

Matthew 14:22-33

²²Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. ²³After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, ²⁴and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

²⁵Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. ²⁶When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.

²⁷But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

²⁸“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

²⁹“Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. ³⁰But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

³¹Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

³²And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. ³³Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Prayer

Talk about the Divinity of Christ.

Feeding 5000

Walking on water.

Calming the waves.

Invokes YAHWEH from the OT.

Job 9:8 YAHWEH treads on the waves of the sea.

Job 9:11 When he passes me, I cannot see him; when he goes by, I cannot perceive him.

Exodus 33:19

I will cause my goodness to pass in front of you. And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

Response: Worship

Prayer as necessary for a child of God.

When we read this story we can understand that there are tremendous lessons that we can draw from our own experience as Christians:

The ways that we perceive God.

The ways that we perceive our circumstances and the challenges and the difficulties that arise in life.

It also reveals to us the challenges that we are faced with when it comes to our trusting in Christ and in his promises to be with us, to never leave us nor forsake us.

Jesus, Lord over the nature.

And we should be encouraged by the very human reality and responses of the disciples. That Peter who is a pillar in church history is also the one who in one moment in an impulsive behaviour is ready to jump onto the water and walk to Jesus and at the next moment loses sight of Jesus and becomes overwhelmed by the storm that is around him. And the sinking that comes from that doubt, the loss of trust in that moment. We should be inspired by the power and the authority of Jesus revealed over nature but in the same time encouraged by the absolute terror and fear of the disciples as they did not even understand what they were saying as they thought it was a ghost and cried out in fear at the same time. Jesus moves towards them and speaks to them for He is the living word, the logos and he tells them, “Do not be afraid and it is him.” And towards the close of the story we see the disciples worshipping Jesus.

Rational Faith

I think it is interesting that so much of emphasis has been placed upon our modern age, especially within the church, especially within the evangelical faith and fundamentalism that faith is something that is meant to be totally rational (reason or logic). That it is something that we should be able to explain and prove, but the bottom line is that faith is supra-rational. That is goes beyond human reason for at its very heart is a total paradox and enigma that cannot be grasped by the human intellect and requires a movement of the Holy Spirit to even begin to journey.

Hebrews 12:1-2

And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

The assurance of the believer, the confidence of the believer, the commitment of the believer, trust and knowledge of the believer is all hinged upon the person of Jesus and it is in him alone that we find that strength to actually endure and live. And the movement we lose sight of Him, we become like Peter and we begin to sink. This is the essence of this story.

Wrong way to interpret: Often the way that this story is preached is driven by a false idea that if you look to Jesus no matter what difficulty is in life, he is bigger than your difficulties and if you trust him you will walk on water. You will think that is that purpose of the story.

I think the purpose of the story is to remind us that the triumph of Jesus is greater than the storms of life.

It does not mean that the more we trust in Jesus the less storms we enter into. I think the more you trust Jesus, the more he will send you right into the heart of storms, to continue to grow you in your trust in him despite the challenges and difficulties. This does not mean that when you look at Jesus your life is going to be without problems. Because, this life, the victory that we claim, the thing that we hope in is the total victory over this world, and has its fulfilment which is yet to come at the return of Christ.

HF: What I want us to consider today are these different facets of faith that we overlook, because it is easy for us to reduce faith to simply a knowledge of Christ. It is possible to believe rightly about God and not experience saving faith.

I would say that sometimes the creatures that understood Jesus better were the demons. They were the ones who always would identify who he was, and his authority and power. They are not partakers of eternal life.

So right knowledge does not guarantee anything, although knowledge is a facet of faith. But it is personal knowledge that is only given to us by the Spirit.

Every move we take towards God we must recognize that it is because his Spirit leads us to.

So when we begin this story we see:

Faith As Both Obedience & Risk

Romans 1:5

Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake.

Romans 16:26

but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith—

Matthew 14:22-24. This is immediately after the feeding of the 5000 men.

Matthew 14:22-24

²²Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. ²³After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, ²⁴and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

This is immediately after feeding the 5000 men. Jesus calls his disciples in Matthew 4 and they obeyed and followed him. Here Jesus asks them to get into the boat and he goes to pray and spend time with his Father. This shows us the absolute necessity of prayer in a believer’s life. He commands his disciples to go to the other side of the sea on a boat. This is a command that requires obedience. So what we have to see is that faith is not enough for the disciples to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, Their Faith Is Dependent Or Revealed By Their Obedience. Their faith is not simply an intellectual response to the truth of who Jesus is but it is a willingness to accept his Lordship and to do what he says. But the obedience is directly connected with the risk.

Abraham:

Hebrews 11:8

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.

That is an awesome way of stating that there are times when Christ calls us to go out into things that are terrifying, that are beyond our comfort that Jesus call us to count the cost and what he is asking us to trust is not in our circumstances, is not in the risk but he is asking us to trust him in spite of the risk.

It is important that we understand that faith is a risk.

“Faith is literally being suspended in the dark.” Karl Barth

So what we are told is that they went out into the water without Jesus, they go ahead of him and they feel alone. They immediately find themselves in a precarious situation. The storm comes upon the boat. They become overwhelmed

Matthew 14:23-24

…and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

Buffeted by the waves, the wind against the boat.

We need to understand that:

Paul says our battle is not against flesh and blood.

John says the whole world is under the sway of the wicked one.

The world in its system, in its philosophy, in what it declares to us as to how we are to live and how we are to think and what we should consider important and what we should trust in. The world says, “We should trust in our senses, we should trust in our feelings.” This is where we should be exercising our faith the world says.

The world system is under the sway of the wicked one and for us to obey Jesus is to enter into tremendous risk, to enter into real storms where the wind of the waves of culture and the storms and the turbulence of the ways of this world will be inevitably against you. This is why Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble.”

The issue is that “We don’t recognize the risk of faith often because we are not first obeying.”

“Many of us never actually get into the storm because we never actually got into the boat.”

We believe Jesus, we trust that he is who he said he was, but there is no evidence of Lordship in our lives. The issue with this is that the church fathers from Augustine, to Aquinas, catholic and protestant theologians alike have always declared that true saving faith is a gift from God. As Karl Barth (says), it is holy God and holy man. It is total enslavement and absolute liberation. That our coming under the full reign of God is the only means by which we become liberated. The moment we place ourselves under God’s authority and Jesus begins to liberate us, then the evidence of our supernatural gift of faith is played out in our responsibility to walk in obedience, and our obedience brings us often into tremendous challenges and risks.

ILLUSTRATION

I think it is one of the difficulties that I have discovered as a pastor is to respond to the call of God, to experience the saving faith of Christ. The only place I have found assurance and confidence is through my abiding in Christ, but when I abide in Christ, he calls me into situations that I don’t always like, that I don’t always feel like God is with me.

There was no way I thought I would be a preacher but Jesus said, “Come follow me.” Jesus sent me into the challenges of ministry, and there were times when I questioned if I was at the right place. There were times when I lost sight like Peter and were beginning to sink under the weight and the pressure of ministry.”

I have found that the moment my eyes turn from Jesus and his Lordship, to what the society says or what would be best for me I sink.

Our saving faith is based outside of us, it is placed in the object of our faith, Christ himself who is its originator. What we need to understand is that to trust in Christ requires obedience which will be inevitably be connected with real legitimate risk.

So we see these two elements. We have got to obey, but our obedience will lead us into risk.

Faith As Knowledge & Trust

Matthew 14:25-27

²⁵Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. ²⁶When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. ²⁷But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

In this story there were two wrong visions, two sights.

The first is that the disciples see Jesus incorrectly.

The second is that Peter sees the circumstances around him incorrectly.

This one is this revelation that faith is connected to knowledge, but it is personal knowledge, it is divine knowledge.

Knowledge of Christ from Others.

Knowledge of Christ from the word.

Personal Knowledge of Christ.

To know Christ requires the eyes of the soul to be opened to who he is, which is directly connected to the revelation that is being given to us about Christ through the word.

Hebrews 10:17

Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.

One of the greatest tendencies in the church today is to be ignorant of the importance of scriptures.

To undermine its authority, to say that this is just a man-made document that cannot be totally trusted, that our faith in Jesus actually overrides the authority of scripture. But we must remember what we know of Jesus comes from the scripture and we are told that the scripture itself is authored through human instruments, this is this co-authorship just like incarnation, the Holy Spirit inspiring human minds who write under the influence of the Spirit to declare to us what God is like. The more we understand the truth of the scripture and trust that its revelation of God’s mercy of his character, of his love, his saving work, the more we will understand and see Jesus.

Often people want the supernatural experience of Jesus but they are unwilling to actually spend time with him, to make time for him through the scripture, but they want just an experience.

But let me tell you that the moment scripture is eradicated, it is the moment we are left without any foundation and all we have at that point is a Jesus of our own making.

This is the history of the liberal church and we Pentecostals are risking being there.

Every Sunday preaching are of a new revelation of Jesus and you take one text from here and one from there to prove their point. Jesus becomes a superman for them and them coming to church is a part of that experience with Christ and then what you can become in Christ and what Christ can do for you without any foundation in the scripture. This is a false Jesus, this is not the Jesus that saves.

The disciples here are revealing the fact that though they are with Jesus they still don’t fully understand him. We have to remember this is before Pentecost, before the gift of the Holy Spirit is fully given. They see him as the ghost, instead of seeing the very one who is there to save them, they cry out in fear and are terrified. The disciples storm is scary in itself, but all of a sudden they are even more scared. They have a ghost scare.

Those who claim that the gospel is something that can be rationally grasped and that is finds its basis in something that makes sense to the senses of the mind. Is there anything that makes sense rationally about someone walking on water? No.

The incarnation itself combining of both the eternal and temporal, God become man and the natural mind cannot explain that.

We can only believe it by the work of the Holy Spirit.

Many people tell that Jesus walked on shallow water because of low tide. The boat was way out, Jesus walked on deep water. This is an attempt to make sense of what is beyond human reason. What we need to see is that Jesus is not violating his humanity here but what he is showing is once again his full humanity under the total empowerment of the Holy Spirit and God sovereignly intervening in the laws that he himself has created. Jesus is revealing the fact that he is the God man. In this revelation we can see that the knowledge is not just simply intellectual ascent to something, but it is personal knowledge for what would Jesus do the moment they cry. He speaks to them.

Matthew 14:27

But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

This is very much the same voice that we get to hear throughout the witness of scripture.

This is what God said through Isaiah:

Isaiah 43:1-2

But now, this is what the Lord says—

he who created you, Jacob,

he who formed you, Israel:

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

When you pass through the waters,

I will be with you;

and when you pass through the rivers,

they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,

you will not be burned;

the flames will not set you ablaze.

The voice of compassion. Remember what Jesus said. We are not going to recognize Jesus by anything other than his voice. He says my sheep hear my voice and they know me and they follow me.

Personal knowledge leads to trust.

Once again only the Spirit can bring that personal knowledge and revelation that true experience, that God desires for us. Notice that faith cannot be built on any of these things apart from the other. We cannot say that faith is merely knowledge, we cannot say that faith is merely trust. Both knowledge and trust are necessary.

Faith As Surrender & Struggle

The disciples as they hear the voice and are comforted but peter speaks out.

Matthew 12:28

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

I want you to notice the surrender of Peter. “Lord, if it is you.” He does not just jump out, he waits for the command of the Lord. He says, “Tell me to come to you on the water.”

Matthew 12:29

“Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.

Here is the struggle. Jesus is calling Peter to do something that is totally absurd. He is asking him to walk on water. Peter always revealing his nature as an impulsive person. Peter is often revealing something very beautiful, which is a reediness to give himself fully to Jesus. But what this story reveals to us is that often our understanding of ourselves and our confidence of our own faith in Christ is not one of the reasons we cannot trust our own ideas about who we are as believers in Jesus. Because, Peter is fully confident that if Jesus calls him onto the water, he is going to walk on water. So, Jesus calls him to walk on water and what happens? He walks for a moment.

Matthew 12:29

“Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.

He walked on water for a moment.

Matthew 12:30

But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

With the cry of Peter, that simple little prayer, Jesus immediately reaches out his hand and takes hold of him saying to him in v31.

Matthew 12: 31

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

Faith requires a surrender, a surrender to go where Jesus is calling you.

Often that surrender becomes a revelation actually of the weakness of our faith.

We often think that we often think that we are much more confident in Jesus and that we are much more confident in our standing than we actually really are. This shows that due to sin which is the perversion of every aspect of our being is that our self-knowledge is not really trustworthy. What did Peter say to Jesus in the night of his arrest. Peter says, “I will never deny you I will lay down my life for you.” What is Peter doing just a few hours later? Denying Jesus.

Self vs Reliance in Christ

Is Peter not sincere? Peter is relying on himself, more confidence in himself and his own ability but what Jesus is revealing is that it is that, “You cannot rely on yourself to follow Jesus, it takes faith in Jesus himself to follow Jesus.” It takes Peter a long time to learn this lesson. It takes us also a long time to learn this lesson.

I think often our vision of Jesus is incorrect which leads us to a wrong vision of our circumstances. What Peter does is the very thing that we all do. We want to follow Jesus. We are sincere in our desire to give him everything. This is the best intention, but with just continually frustrating results.

You hear a sermon and like you say, “I am going to read the Bible everyday now.” But often our self-knowledge is that we are continuing to spend our week on what we are going to do instead of doing the only thing that we can do, which is to trust in the author and the perfector of our faith. What Christ continually brings us to is an end to ourselves.

Paul says, “I must die daily.”

Because the old man, the old woman always lingers. If we place our eyes on anything but Christ, that old man, that old woman that was supposedly crucified with Christ has an incredible ability to resurrect again and again.

Our confidence in Christ becomes immediately diminished by our circumstances and the confidence we thought we had in the safety of the gathering of the church, immediately finds itself nowhere to be found when you go into the workplace or the world outside.

The ways that we cling to this super confidence, shows that the heart often is willing but as Jesus said the flesh is weak. When Jesus asked the disciples to pray, do you think that they did not want to pray? I think they wanted to but then he goes and they fall asleep. Once again the frailty of humanity shows us that our salvation can never be based in our own efforts. That our faith can never be based on something that we manufacture. All of these things are meant to show us that

Our surrender to Christ often is directly connected with the struggle to stay surrendered, to stay dependent.

Jesus understands the fragility of our flesh, he knows the weakness of our faith, but he also said, “Even the smallest amount of faith has the power to move mountains.”

What he is trying to bring us to is an end of ourselves, so that we can be resurrected in the fullness and in the newness of life that only he can give. I believe that we need to come to a more robust understanding of faith, and face honestly and courageously that faith is difficult and that there is a conflict involved and that there is a legitimate struggle and they often goes beyond the human reason and it fights against the very weight of the very current of our cultures, and it stands against the tides of the philosophical sayings that are all around us about “What will bring you personal satisfaction?” but just like Peter, that is got to be sunk. Sometimes we need to sink a little bit with it, so that we can taste our desperate need for Christ, because Christ cannot be our Saviour unless we let him save us.

We need to understand that faith is receiving but it is also giving of ourselves fully to the giver.

Faith As Certainty & Commitment

Matthew 14:32-33

³²And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. ³³Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

I want to end here that Faith is both certainty and commitment.

There is a teaching going that once saved you are always saved. I have grown in my own relationship with Christ, grown in my understanding of the scripture and once saved you are often saved becomes a compound for loose living. Once you are saved, you are always saved, so just do what you want. But when we look at the scripture, faith is not just a static thing where you put your hand up and you accepted Jesus one day and you now do what you do with your life.

But the only one who is assured of their salvation is the one who stays close to their salvation which is not something but someone, Jesus.

That the certainty and assurance of faith comes through a commitment to Christ and a continual abiding in Christ. I have never met a Christian who is certain of their salvation who is walking in blatant disobedience. In fact, those who tend to fall into gross sin in their lives, find themselves constantly wondering and stressed out about their standing with Christ.

Jesus is ever available and his mercy is new every day and I have seen him bring back to himself the worst of sinners, including me. But I have also found that there are seasons when I am the most confident, the most certain of God’s love and the saving power of Christ, and the living giving elements of His existence is only when I am abiding in him. Because he is my salvation. So anything outside of him is an impossibility that becomes impossible when we turn our backs on him. So once saved, always saved is an unhelpful category and it not the full Biblical truth.

I think that certainty and assurance is meant for those who abide in Christ.

We never feel safe and secure in our faith in disobedience. That is not safe because disobedience leads to death, sin is death.

If once saved, always saved is true it is like putting your hand on a hot stove, not having to feel the pain of burn. We do it again, we burn ourselves. Your body tells you that that is not good, therefore you pull your hand out.

In the same way, one of the way Jesus gets our attention is to remove that sense of certainty that we might turn back to him and abide in him once again, because the movement we take our eyes off him, we are left to our own devices. Are you ever in a good place, when you are the one controlling your life? No.

I think the most dangerous place that we find ourselves instead of responding in repentance and sees disobedience, to discover certainty and commitment again is that when you are no longer actually are afraid of the sin that you have embarked on, not only you lose your certainty but you actually willingly give up your commitment and walk away because your Christian life has become too difficult. This is exactly what

Christianity is not tried and not wanted; it is not difficult but not tried.

It is difficult. It is costly and does not make sense to the world. The world is opposed to the true gospel. This city is opposed to the true gospel. You cannot think that it is easy to be a Christian, the ease of the Christian life is found in abiding in Christ, but our external life is going to be the one of trial and struggle and wrestling. And often the greatest enemy we will face in our lives is our own false ideas about who we are, even our false ideas of our own walk with Christ.

CONCLUSION

I would encourage you as we close today is to ask yourself:

• What kind of faith are you exercising?
• Have you seen in your own life that faith is a combination of obedience as well as risks?
• Have you seen that faith is both knowledge, personal knowledge as well as total trust?
• Do you recognize that faith is both surrender, but that surrender is often connected with incredible struggle? We are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We are to die daily.
• Finally, do you see your faith as both certainty and continuity? I know who I believe in and I am confident that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him.

Notice, we must be committed to him. Give yourself fully to him by abiding in Christ. That is where the calm and confidence in the midst of the storm comes. That is the true Biblical concept of rest. Jesus wants for us because what happens is when Christ is in the midst of them, storm ceases and the outcome is worship. That is my prayer for you, that we will be a worshipping community because of our deep abiding in faith in the living Christ.

My hope is built on nothing else.