Matthew 14:22-33

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. We have some extra copies. If you didn’t bring one with you and you’d like one to follow along, just raise your hand up real high and somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle. We also have a network here in the building. If you have an online Bible, you’d like to use that, you feel free to jump on. I think maybe that information is right there at the bottom of that slide here in the room.

We’re coming off our study from last week of the miracle typically known as the feeding of the 5,000. I thank our good friend, the poet, Malcolm Guite, from over in England, who was here last week did such a great job walking us through that, showing us how through the heart and hands of Jesus we saw a full display of the divine generosity and provision for several thousand hungry people. Look with me, if you will, in Matthew 14. Just taking a step back a little bit, verse 20, it says, “They all ate and were satisfied.” I like that word a lot. I wanted to look it up. I wanted to know what it meant. I’ve had moments like that. The Greek word is chortazo, and it means to gorge oneself.

So this was 5,000 men plus women and children, probably 10, 15, 20,000 people, who all needed to loosen their belts at the end of the meal because they were able to gorge themselves on this five loaves and a couple fish without tartar sauce, as far as I can tell. I mean, there’s nothing mentioned but the loaves and the fish, and it’s pretty interesting to me, as we read in the parallel accounts… By the way, the only miracle in all four gospels, the feeding of the 5,000 or the 10, 15, 20, whatever it was. And I love that.

So see that, as Malcolm said last week, it’s important for us, to see some of this as we read it. Don’t just let it be lifeless words on the page, but try to see some of that. And before I read the next section for us, let us pray that the Lord will give us eyes. He will illuminate the text for us.

“So Lord, your Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path. Lighten our darkness we beseech Thee, O, Lord. Grant us grace to hear Your Word in humility, to receive it, to believe it with faith. And grant us the courage and the strength to rise and follow You on the path that You will now set before us. We pray for a clearer vision of Your truth, a greater faith in Your power, and a more confident assurance of Your love for us. In Jesus’ name amen and amen.”

So our passage today, Matthew 14:22-33.if we were going to title it this morning, I’ll call it, “Dare We Trust Jesus?”  Just a question, just to ask. I think perhaps as we read this, perhaps you’ll even see that there indeed is an answer. Verse 22, “And immediately… ” There’ll be three of those, by the way, in this passage alone. He’s borrowing a little from Mark. Mark’s gospel uses the word immediately 40 times. Mark’s gospel is the short attention span person’s gospel. Immediately. Immediately. Immediately. Immediately. The scene is changing all the time. But here, Matthew’s going to do it three times. “And immediately Jesus made the disciples,” this is right after feeding all these people, “get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side while He sent the multitudes away.

“And after He had sent the multitudes away, He went up to the mountain by Himself to pray. And when it was evening,” As it becomes darker and darker, “He was there alone. The boat,” that’s with the disciples in it, “was already many stadia away from the land; battered by the waves for the wind was contrary.” Cross reference the other gospels, you start to figure out, many stadia is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of two, three miles out already. And so their boat is already out there, it’s being battered by the waves, and the wind was contrary. So from below the waves are coming up and tossing the boat about. From above the wind is just howling, wailing all over them. They’re just row, row, row!!! Peter’s probably yelling, “Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!” And Bartholomew is doing all the best he can do. Philip and Andrew are doing what they can.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a canoe when somebody was paddling on the wrong side. “Not that side. We’re going around a circle!” or “We’re headed for the falls!” or whatever. And the Sea of Galilee, no falls, thankfully, but they were many stadia away, probably two, three miles. He’s gone up to pray and was there alone. [Verse 25] “In the ‘fourth watch of the night,’ this is the Roman clock, and this will be 3:00 AM – bleary-eyed, storm-beaten. “In the third or the fourth watch,”  around 3:00 AM, “of the night, He,” Jesus, “came to them walking upon the sea.”

Now that’s quite an amazing statement right there. We just talked about Jesus being fully human and fully divine, and I can conceptually philosophically, theologically hold the tension in my mind a little bit and sort of understand what that means. But if I had been on the shore when Jesus decided to go down to the water from the mountain where He was praying, and if I had just been over there mending my nets and fixing my boat or something like that and I see this guy come down and walk toward the water, I’m thinking, “This guy is going to walk out there and drown himself. This is like a suicide case.” And then, all of a sudden though, He just walks out on the water and then He keeps walking for two miles, which is a long way to walk on water. Last time I checked, none of us have been doing that kind of thing.

He comes to them in the fourth watch of the night, walking on the sea, even though the people at the beach, if there were any, were just their mouths hanging open. [Verse26] “And when the disciples saw Him,” remember they’re stroking hard as they can on the oar, “walking on the sea, they were frightened, and they said, ‘It’s a ghost!’”  Phantosmia’ in the Greek, that’s where we get Phantom.

What would you think? I would think this is a good time to pray, not only for the storm and the boat going down, but now we’re seeing things at 3:00 AM. Some of the disciples are probably poking each other, “Did you see that? Do you see that, you see what I see?” And you’re trying to just clear your eyes and double check your sanity. [Verse26-27 cont’d] “They cried out for fear, but immediately,” there it is again, “Jesus spoke to them saying, ‘Take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid.” There’s a three-part sermon right there. We could go for a long time just on that. Take courage. Why? Because you need it and you don’t have it yourself. Jesus is a great source of courage. “It is I, ‘ego eimi.’ This is the same thing Yahweh says to Moses in Exodus 3:14, when Moses says, “Who should I tell them sent me?”  ”‘Ego eimi,”  same kind of little combination of words even though that would’ve been in Hebrew, this would’ve been in Greek here. This is fascinating.

And do not be afraid. We’ve made this point so many times here, but I’ll keep making it, the most often repeated command in scripture is some form of this. Don’t be afraid. Do not fear something like that. And it reminds us what the God of the Bible wants for you and wants for me. In this little statement that Jesus is making, He’s clearly saying the antidote to your fear is My presence with you. Doesn’t say anything about the water, the storm, the waves. It’s just take courage; it’s Me. Don’t be afraid.[Verse 28] “Peter answered Him,” and this is… And by the way, Matthew is the only one that includes this little bit of the information. We have this account in Matthew, we have it in Mark, we have it in John, but not in Luke. But this is interesting that Matthew includes this.

“Peter answered Him and said, ‘Lord, if it is You, command me to come out onto the water to You.’” Just a moment there – the other 11 disciples might have looked at Peter, “You what?!” And then Peter, what motivated him to even do that? I don’t know if you’ve ever been wondering if it is the Lord or not in your life. I have. “Is this really God? Is God really allowing this to happen?” Or this opportunity – “Is this really God’s plan for me?” How do we know if it’s God or not? Great question – I think a lot of us struggle with that from time to time. Peter’s there, but in that moment, what made him think of that? We’re not told.

‘If it’s really You,’ Does that say he’s filled with doubt and he is going to raise the bar, the threshold of proof to way up here? “If it’s really You, tell me to come out of the water with You.’” And then I’ll believe. What’s a threshold of belief for you? What is it that God has to do that He isn’t doing every single day that you need Him to do before you’ll believe? I would argue, along with G. K. Chesterton:

“God never tires of doing amazing things, but He does so many of them in full  view; we just don’t see them.”
G. K. Chesterton

What if, every single day, He gets up and says to the stars, “Do it again.” What if, every day, He says to the birds, “Fly again to the sunset. Do that again. Put purple together with orange and yellow and blue. Do it again.” He just never grows tired of creating even though we sometimes look up in the sky and all we see is rocks and gas, or we look at the sunset and all we see is just another one.

This is so amazing how he says, “If it’s really You, tell me to come out onto the water with you.” And then Jesus says one word,[verse 29] “Come.” Now, if I’m one of the other 11 disciples, I’m really excited. What’s going to happen? Well, Peter, you really slipped on that banana peel, didn’t you? I mean, you posted this thing and now it’s come to you. This is what you asked for. Peter got out of the boat. What did that look like? What do you do when you’re in a boat, the wind is howling, the storms are raging, you think there’s a ghost out there? What was it like to go over with just one leg and put it down there like that? Was he still holding on with both hands? I would be. I’d be going like this too. I mean, my knees would be knocking. He gets out of the boat is all we’re told, and he walked on the water.

This is just powerful. But then what happened was as he comes toward Jesus, he takes his eyes off Jesus, he sees the wind, verse 30 tells us, and he became afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried out saying, “Lord, save me.” What a great prayer that is. Three words,” Lord save me.” Most of our prayers can be reduced to, “Help!” or maybe another one, “Thank you.”  I probably say the first one way more than I say the second one. To my shame, I would like to be more thankful than I am, but here is Peter and he starts to walk and then he takes his eyes off the Lord, we’re told, and he begins to sink.

When your name means stone or rock, water isn’t your friend. You’re going down. And yet he has for a moment, he has walked on water toward Jesus in this interaction with his Savior. I don’t know what that must have felt like. I don’t know what the other guys were thinking. They’re a little more cautious. They remain in the boat. I’ve been cautious in my faith before too. I’ve been cautious in my understanding, my trusting of Jesus. Maybe you have as well. Peter seems to be one of those guys that dives into things head first, full speed ahead. He’s overconfident a lot. He says things that create awkward moments a lot. It’s kind of open mouth switch feet for him so many times.

But here, this is just interesting that he goes through all of this, and then, “Lord, save me.” And then you’re at the place where Matthew’s brought us now, what is Jesus’ response? What is Jesus going to do? I’m going to argue today that if we wanted to just moralize this text, we’d focus on Peter. “If you want to walk on water, you should do X, Y, Z, whatever.” But if we want to actually see maybe what this reveals about Jesus, I think we’ll head in the direction of gospel, the good news. And so this is awesome. What is Jesus’ response? [Verse 31] “Jesus immediately,” there’s that immediately again, “stretched out His hand and took hold of him and said to him, ‘O, you of little faith. Why did you doubt?’”

Remember, all of Jesus’ questions are rhetorical. There isn’t something He doesn’t know. He wants us to learn something from His questions. “Why would you doubt? O, ye of little faith.” And in chapter 17 He’s going to say, “By the way, it’s not the amount of your faith, it’s the object of your faith, essentially.” “The person with faith just like as tiny as a mustard seed could move mountains,” He says in chapter 17. This isn’t about the amount, and you hear this with a lot of modern preachers, they’ll say, “Well, your faith is too small. You need to name it, claim it, and frame it.” No, I don’t think that’s it. I think a lot of that is in the direction of me telling God what to do. A lot of that is in the direction of me acting like I know what’s completely the right thing and the best thing in this particular moment. The fact is I don’t.

But if I knew everything God knew, I could pray like that. But I don’t. And so, we always leave room for the sovereignty of God. We always leave room for the perfect wisdom that comes down from above. And so, He says, “O, you of little faith. Why did you doubt?” And remember, I think the other disciples are hearing this as well in the boat, and they’re watching Peter, and they’re probably even talking about Peter. You know how church people can sometimes talk about the other person. They might be talking about, “Can you believe that idiot? He got out there in the water. Look at him, he’s sinking. He’s all wet. Don’t bring him back in here. He smells bad. He’s stinky.” Whatever… and just all kinds of stuff going on, who knows what, right?

“But they got into the boat,” verse 32 says, “and the wind stopped.” The idea is that it went click like a light switch. Now, waves that are rocking in the Sea of Galilee 680 feet below sea level, it’s about 15 miles south to north and then about seven or eight miles across the east and west side. These guys are in likely the northwest shoreline area, near Capernaum is my guess. Even though they’re two, three miles out, Jesus was still able to see them from His prayer perch up on the mountain somehow, in a stormy night. I can’t explain that other than to say He is fully human and fully God. If I had created the entire universe out of nothing, then all of what I’ve just read here about what Jesus does would be nothing to me.

And so He says, “‘O, you of little faith,’ and they got in the boat and the wind stopped. Those who were in the boat worshiped Him.” Here’s the response of people to Jesus [verse33], “And they said, ‘You are certainly God’s Son.’” This is the first time in the gospel of Matthew that they have said, “You are God’s Son!” It’s not the first time it has been said in Matthew’s gospel, it’s the first time these guys have said it. Who else has said it? Satan said it. “If You are the Son of God.” or “Since You are the Son of God.” And so Satan acknowledged something about Jesus and His connection with the Father.

And then there were two demon-possessed men on the gathering side when Jesus came and was about to deliver them from this legion of demons that had so beset them and cast those demons into some pigs, some swine on the side of the hillside there, those two demon-possessed guys also said, “Son of God, what have You to do with us?” And it’s interesting that the devil and the demons got it before the disciples got it. They also got it; the disciples got it, before the religious leadership of the day got it. Because the religious leadership of the day is fighting it and resisting it aggressively that Jesus is the Son of God, that He’s fully human and that He’s fully divine. I think all of that works together to show us what this really is all about.

Let me just throw a few things up on the screen for you, what do we learn here? Well, if our question is, “Dare we trust Jesus?” I think this little pericope helps us with this. Let me give you a little bit of geography so you can see where we’re at. The map should jump up here on the screen real easily. This is the Sea of Galilee. Bethsaida, Capernaum are up here. This is the Sea of Galilee right here in the northern third of Israel. We’ll be going there in March. I’m looking forward to that trip. This place, Gennesaret, is right along about here. And Tiberius will be down about here, the City of Tiberius, currently in our modern day and age, the only city that was allowed to remain there on the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee.

So here it is sits about, like I say, almost 700 feet below sea level. Mount Herman is usually snow-capped and it’s to the north somewhere up about in here somewhere. And so, the cold air from Mount Herman will sweep down onto the Sea of Galilee, which sitting as low as it does, is probably warmer. And so that’s a great recipe for sudden storms. Nashville is over here, by the way, in case some of you are wondering where we are, that’s us. But at least you can kind of get an idea here, this is the Dead Sea down here and down here we have Jerusalem, we have Jericho. So this is, again, just to give you a little bit of an idea of where it is geographically reminding you that our Bible is actually set in space, time, and history in real places.

And so, we come to a text like this that has such a fantastic event in it and a fantastic storyline, dare we believe it? Dare we trust Jesus in this?  First point, Jesus doesn’t send His disciples away, we see in verse 22, but He does send them ahead. He sends the multitudes away, but Jesus sends His disciples on ahead. I think this is interesting. I don’t think it’s always the case that He’s sending them ahead of Him. I think sometimes they’re following Him and walking along with Him. But the thing is they’re doing His bidding. Whose idea was it for them to get in the boat that night? It was Jesus’ idea, just like in the previous occasion where we read about Jesus and the disciples. That time He was in the boat already with them when they set off. They were going to cross the Sea of Galilee. The storm rose up, and He fell asleep in the boat. You remember the account? They wake Him up, “Don’t You care, we’re perishing.”

He woke up and said a single word, hush, to the wind and the waves, and they both became still. It says there, “They were even more afraid.” “Who is this that the wind and the waves obey Him?”

And now you start to see, I think, miracle after miracle, that all of this is really telling us something more each time about who Jesus is. Dare we trust Jesus? I would say yes. I think this teaching miracle was designed to produce spiritual growth in the lives of His disciples.

We read about storms in the Bible. There are storms of correction like the storm that Jonah was in when he got thrown over the boat’s edge. God had told him to go preach in Nineveh. He went down to the shore and got in the boat going the other way; didn’t like the Ninevites. They had terrorized Israel. He hated them. He had racial prejudice against them. He had religious prejudice against them. He didn’t want them to hear the message that God had for them. He resisted and he went the other way. Storm of correction comes up. He gets thrown over, swallowed by big fish, burped up on the land in the direction of Nineveh, goes and preaches, and 120,000 people repented.

Who is it I’m holding this story back from because I don’t like them? May God enlarge our hearts. But Jesus, in this case, doesn’t send His disciples away, but He is sending them ahead and He’s got a purpose. Let’s throw up a slide of the purpose of Jesus’ miracles, reminding you of each and every one of these. It’s not just a bit of supernatural entertainment. It’s not just Him trying to amass crowds. He didn’t have any problem with crowds. And even at the beginning of the Sermon of the Mount, He literally saw the crowds his way. He turned and went the other way. Sometimes He’s trying to avoid the crowds. But the purpose of the miracles when you read the four gospel accounts, it appears to me that He is displaying His power and authority. That’s true. He is affirming His identity in doing that though. It’s not just spiritual entertainment, it’s actually, if this is the Son of God, one would think He could do some things that the rest of us can’t do. So His identity is affirmed in these.

And they reveal His compassion. Why? Because there He is having His own quiet time, His own quiet moment, and He sees them from a distance and He comes down, breaks His prayer, comes down, walks out on the water, goes out there to be with them because they were afraid and their boat was being rocked like crazy. I think it’s because He actually sovereignly controls the weather. Why do I think that? Well, because when He got in the boat, the wind stopped. So I think He not only stopped the wind, but I think He started the wind. I think this whole thing was His idea. It’s all part of nurturing and developing them in their understanding of who He is. And it’s all meant to inspire a response.

Remember, some people saw the miracles of Jesus and their response was, “How dare You heal somebody on the Sabbath? How dare You break our religious rules.” Other people saw Jesus heal and then went home and grabbed another sick person and brought that sick person in, and another and another. Other people now are starting to see here in this boat, “You surely are the Son of God.” And so, what He ultimately wanted to happen I think is actually happening. As to miracles, Tim Keller says:

“There’s nothing illogical about miracles if a Creator God exists. If a God exists who’s big enough to create the universe in all its complexity and vastness, why should a mere miracle be such a mental stretch?”
Tim Keller

Yeah, I agree with him, that’s so true. If you can buy, as we’ve said before, if you can buy Genesis 1:1, the entire rest of the Bible is a cakewalk. “In the beginning, God created… ” If He created everything that’s in the heavens and the earth as far as I can tell, just as we saw in our catechism, in our questions and answers, that’s pretty much every created thing. That’s pretty much everything that isn’t God Himself. If He can do that, then walking on water, defying the gravity (that He created,) walking on water (that He created} on this planet (that He created) to be with these men in this boat {that He created} in the middle of that storm (that He created). Again, you see where I’m going here. He is sovereign over all of this.

Number two, you may take your eyes off Jesus like Peter did, but He never takes His eyes off of you. You’re never out of His sight. You’re never out of His reach. I take that from this passage as well as other passages that I think reinforce that same thing. You think about the omni words when we’re describing God, that He’s omnipresent, that He’s omniscient, that He’s omnipotent, that He is everywhere, omnipresent, that He knows everything, omniscient, that He can do anything that can be done, He’s omnipotent. If God is that in reality, then He actually knows what’s going on in your life and He knows what’s going in my life and He knows what’s going on around the world with all of His people. I know that sounds big. Some of you are probably thinking, “I wonder if God uses Google to track everybody. How’s He do that?” No, He’s way bigger than Google. He’s way bigger than all of that. If He’s infinite, what I’m trying to communicate is that we won’t be able to fully comprehend that.

“Finitum non capax infiniti” is the Latin phrase. It says “the finite cannot fully comprehend the infinite”. What we’re arguing is that because we are finite, we cannot fully comprehend God. So if you are waiting until you fully comprehend God to believe and trust Jesus, you’ll be waiting forever. You do not have the capacity to do that. Neither do I which means we do a whole lot of worshipping in wonder because we’re astonished, we’re blown away. He’s truly that amazing.

Three, faith in Jesus is not a mere leap in the dark, but rather it’s a step toward the light. If you want to walk on water, you’ll have to get out of the boat, that’s true. I’ll quote from… there’s a book by the same title by a pastor, “But I think faith, if it must be compared to a race is most often like a marathon, less like a sprint. Our fears, our doubts, our distractions may cause us to begin to sink from time to time, but they never prevent Jesus from being able to save us.” And you know what blows me away about this text? It’s the way Jesus responds to Peter as he begins to sink. While Peter was beginning to sink, Jesus didn’t say, “Listen, Peter, I think I want to explain to you the doctrine of fixing your eyes on Me.” He didn’t take that time to do a three-point alliterative sermon instructing Peter as Peter’s going down. Maybe let him go under for a few minutes and experience what drowning would be like in hopes of completely scaring heaven into him. No, Jesus graciously reaches down.

And then when He gets to the boat, does He say to the 11, “Where were you guys? You guys could have been out on the water. Look what you missed.”  There’s none of that. Now, along the way He corrects them and teaches. I’m not saying He doesn’t do that, but His timing is so perfect with these guys in this moment. I don’t know, you can probably think back to in your own walk with Christ, a moment where you learned something through a storm of correction or a storm of perfection or a storm of just instruction. And you can look back and you can see, “Look how gracious Jesus or the Holy Spirit was to me in that particular moment, how kind He is. How strong He is. And how He is both.” We need look no further. He really is the one.

Faith in Jesus is not merely a leap in the dark; it’s a step toward the light. “Pensees” means thoughts in French. It’s a collection of fragments written by the 17th century French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal. His intellect was so considerable and remarkable that Oz Guinness, a friend to some of us here at the church and the guy we’ve quoted often, who has read Pascal’s work almost every year for nearly 30 years, I love that about Oz, that he would do that, he describes Pascal as one who, listen, showers a thousand sparks of truth into the darkened thinking of our times. Showers a thousand sparks. It’s like some kind of firework gone off, and that’s Blaise Pascal’s thinking.

Here are two quotes from Pensees.

“Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées 265

And then,

“Reason’s last step, human reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées 267

Some guys will sit around and ponder and question, and I’ve seen it in the last couple decades where there’s just a whole lot of people that are so fascinated, enchanted by circular questioning. And really, their goal is not really to ever come to any kind of an answer about who Jesus is. They just want to keep pushing and pushing and asking questions and showing that they’re smarter than the answers that might come their way. In our arrogance, what happens is we end up just sitting in the boat and missing the whole point of the miracle at all.

Fourthly, peace is found not in the absence of storms, but in the nearness of Jesus. I would argue that storms come in many kinds and all shapes and sizes. Storms can be unsettling, disorienting, even confusing. If you look back over your life and you haven’t felt like you walked through some storm or traversed some storm, just hang around. I’m not trying to tell you something that’s unreal here, but this world is filled with storms. You’re going to face giants. You’re going to have to endure storms. But what this shows me is the kind of response Jesus has to these guys as they go through a storm, even to Peter’s sinking faith, and that makes Jesus all the more beautiful to me. Isn’t that the kind of Savior you want? Isn’t that the kind of Savior you need? One who can save you, one who loves you enough to do that as well. Peace is not found in the absence of storms, but in the nearness of Jesus. Asaph in Psalm 73 said,

But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I’ve made the Lord God my refuge that I might tell of all Thy works.”
Asaph, Psalm 73:28

Beautiful.

Some of you know the name Alistair Begg, pastor in Cleveland at the Parkside Church. He said, “Sometimes the center of God’s will may be for us the very eye of the storm.” I think as Jesus sent these guys out there that night, I think He knew exactly what He was going to do, He knew exactly what they needed. And so, He sent them out there so that they could go through this lesson and learn also, as Ortberg says,

“Peace doesn’t come from finding a lake with no storms; it comes from having Jesus in your boat.”
John Ortberg, If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat

As we bring this to a close, dare we trust Jesus? I ask you again, dare we trust Jesus? I say “Yes. Yes and amen. You trust Him.” Many others here would say the same thing. Why? Because Jesus is both strong and kind; Jesus does love the little children. Jesus loves all the children of the world no matter where they’re from, no matter the color of their skin, no matter how much rebellion they’ve been caught up in. Wherever you are at right now, if you hear His voice calling through the storms that are howling around you at all, would you turn to Him? Would you even recognize Him or would you just write Him off as some kind of a ghost, some kind of apparition, some kind of a phantom? Or would you turn to Him? Would you come to Him if He called you to? Would you recognize Him when He gets in your boat? And would you fall down and worship Him? Dare we trust Jesus? Yes. Jesus does indeed love you, and Jesus is indeed uniquely qualified to be your Savior and mine.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne says this,

“You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness…”

And I’m going to put in parentheses there, or storm. He really becomes quite real and precious to us during those times. And then M’Cheyne goes on to say,

“…Then, He is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, a rock rising above the storm.”
Robert Murray M’Cheyne

We know Jesus, the solid rock on which we stand. Let’s pray.

“Lord, thank You for this passage, all it can teach us, all that You reveal about Yourself in this passage. Lord, we’re grateful to see You even though it may be through trembling hands and bodies that need lots of help because we’re riding out some kind of a storm right now, even though it may be that our souls feel exhausted, like too little butter spread over too much bread. Nonetheless, Lord, may we turn to You as You call our names, as You draw us to Yourself, because You have drawn near to us. We pray all of this in Your precious name. amen and amen.”

(Edited for Reading)