INI August 3 & 4, 2008 Pentecost 12
Sermon preached at Cross of Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), 9931 Foley Blvd. NW, Coon Rapids, MN 55433. Please share this with someone else after you have finished. Thank you!
Bible Text—Matthew 14:22-33
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
Your family is all packed up in the car, and you get stuck in traffic heading out of town for vacation. You’re the last car in a long line of vehicles stopped in a construction zone. You notice in your rearview mirror a semi approaching behind you at a high rate of speed, and it doesn’t look like he’s slowing down. “Lord, let that semi driver see us and please keep us safe,” you pray. You’ve paid all your bills for the month, you’ve set aside your church offerings, and you figure you have enough left over to make ends meet until your next paycheck. But you go out to the mailbox, and there’s another bill staring you in the face that you had totally forgotten about. You pray: “Dear Jesus, please take care of us.” Your son wants to be a doctor and he enrolls in the pre-med program of a prestigious university. He waits and waits to hear if he’s been accepted or not. The letter finally arrives that tells him if he’ll be a student there in the fall or not. As he opens the letter, you pray silently, “Heavenly Father, please grant it so this letter says yes.”
These are all examples of real-life situations when believers come to their Lord in prayer. The prayers are short, but God hears and answers them according to his will just as much as if they were long and carefully worded. In the same way, we find Peter crying out to Jesus as he was sinking into the depths of the
- Lord, save me from the temptations of the world.
Jesus had just fed the five thousand men—not to mention all the women and children— with five loaves of bread and two fish. The crowds, whose stomachs were filled, were so impressed with Jesus’ miracle they were planning to take him by force and make him their earthly king. We can about imagine the conversations that were going on—“If Jesus is our king, he can provide us with everything we need so we don’t have to work anymore!” Before Pentecost even Jesus’ disciples had thoughts their Master had come to establish some sort of earthly empire. If the Twelve knew what the crowds were planning, they would really be tempted. So, immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray.
From the words Matthew uses, the disciples must have hesitated to leave Jesus there by himself. But the Lord compelled them to go. It was also in the best interests of the people that Jesus dismissed and dispersed them before they could do something hasty. But their desire to make Jesus an earthly king was also a temptation for our Lord. He was “tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin,” Hebrews 4:15. If Satan could get Jesus to sin just once, he could not have been our Savior. Jesus needed time alone to speak with his heavenly Father about everything that was going on.
The temptations our Lord and the disciples had to deal with are really not much different from what we must endure today. People are still trying to make Jesus an earthly king by promoting a false millennialistic theology that says Jesus will rule on earth for a thousand years at the end of time. This is nothing more than what the people of Christ’s day wanted, but only with a Christian veneer. There’s also the temptation to make Jesus an earthly king today by some who think Christian churches should be involved in our American political process. And so we have Christian pastors and church leaders endorsing political candidates, and we have Christian churches promoting certain political causes, rather than trying to maintain the separation of church and state. This is not just a part of our Constitution, but the separation of church and state is more importantly a teaching of Scripture we believe, teach and confess.
Tied in with all this is the temptation to measure the success of the church with the standards of the world, especially the business world. As a result, churches are not considered successful or effective unless they build bigger buildings, take in greater offerings, maintain larger budgets and have more and more people listed on their membership rosters. It’s as if the church is just like all the other civic and social organizations of our society. But proclaiming all of God’s Word in its truth and purity and administering the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper as Christ gave them to us—well, that’s considered unimportant and even ridiculous in the eyes of the world.
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And so Jesus warns us: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation,” Matthew 26:41. And we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation,” Matthew 6:13.
- Lord, save me from the storms of life.
When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is
Throughout that night the disciples were trying to sail to the other side of the
It was sometime between 3 and 6 o’clock in the morning when Jesus came to the disciples, walking on the water. When they saw this, the Twelve were disturbed and troubled. They were thrown into confusion. They thought Jesus was a ghost or an apparition. It was an old fishermen’s superstition that seeing a ghost on the water was a sure sign they were all going to drown. And so these grown men shriek. Have you ever heard grown men yell out in fear? It’s not a very pleasant sound.
But Jesus didn’t want his disciples terrified. He speaks to them right away: “Be courageous!”, he says. “Stop being afraid!” Why? It is I. In the original Greek of our text the words are literally, “I am.” This is the name God used to describe himself to Moses at the burning bush: “I AM WHO I AM,” Exodus 3:14. The God of the Old Testament—the Lord Jehovah himself—had come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
“He is the true God and eternal life,” 1 John 5:20. Jesus’ words themselves give the courage and take away the fear.
Now we may not necessarily find ourselves on a small rickety boat in the middle of a lake during a terrifying storm. But we have other kinds of storms that come crashing in on us. The greatest storm of all, of course, is that of our sin and guilt that weighs heavy upon us and which should rightfully plunge us to the depths of hell. Then there are all the other storms of life. We may not enough money coming in to pay all our bills. High gasoline prices and higher food costs make life all the more difficult. Some may be losing their homes to foreclosure. You may be dissatisfied with your job or maybe even losing your job. There could be trouble in your marriage. Possibly your children are straying from the path you have taught them from God’s Word. Maybe you’ve just received word from your doctor that you have a potentially fatal disease you must deal with.
Jesus comes to us through his Word and sacraments and he says to us, as he said to the disciples on the lake: “Take courage! It is
- Lord, save me from my own weakness of faith.
“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
Peter’s not testing Jesus to see if it’s really him; he simply wants to express his faith in his Savior. Notice how Peter asks Jesus to command him to come. Only a clear word from the Lord would enable Peter to walk on the water. He did not want to tempt God. Nor was Peter trying to show up the other Eleven. If this often brash disciple had ulterior motives or he did not have true faith, Jesus would never have told him to step out of the boat!
So Peter was able to walk on the water and approach Jesus. As long as Peter kept his footing on the Word his Master spoke and as long as he kept the eyes of his faith on Jesus, he was able to walk on the water. But as soon as he lost his hold on God’s promise and as soon as he allows his eyes to wander away from Jesus, he had nothing left but his own strength, and he sank. Although he was a fisherman and a good swimmer, Peter became afraid when he saw the effects of the wind.
So this scared disciple cried out a short, simple prayer, asking Jesus to rescue him: “Lord, save me!” As soon as Peter cried out, Jesus grabbed him so he wouldn’t drown. Our Lord pointed out that his doubt crowded out Peter’s faith at the thought of danger.
You may not realize it at first glance, but actually several miracles took place here. Jesus—and then Peter—walked on the water. The storm stopped as soon as they got into the boat. The apostle John also reports in his Gospel that when Jesus and Peter had gotten back into the boat, immediately they were at their destination. When the disciples witnessed all these miracles, they got down on their knees and worshipped Jesus. They realized they were face to face with God himself.
So often in our own lives we try to fix things ourselves by our own strength or ingenuity, without bringing our problems to the Lord in prayer. It’s sad—but true—that so often when we face the difficulties of life, we don’t even think of bringing them to Jesus in prayer. Even when it comes to the biggest problem we have, the problem of sin, by nature we deceive ourselves into thinking we can reconcile ourselves to God.
But the Lord gets against the wall, so to speak, to make us understand we’re powerless. Through the proclamation of his law he makes us realize how spiritually weak we really are. But it’s when we’re incapacitated that the Lord steps in and resolves things for us according to his will. He reveals to us through his gospel how he resolved the problem of our sin and guilt by taking it all to the cross and nailing it there. He assures us that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him,” Romans 8:28, and that nothing can “separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” Romans 8:39.
“LORD, SAVE ME!” Those were not just Peter’s words—they should also be ours. Lord, save me from the temptations of the world. Lord, save me from the storms of life. Lord, save me from my own weakness of faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
