What If The Storms of Life Don't Come?

Sermon - August 10, 2008

Scripture Readings-

The first reading from the Old Testament is from Job Chapter 38. If you are concerned at all about global warming or tornados or are afraid of lightening or thunder, read Job Chapter 38. It tells about God’s great control over the forces of nature and how God stores up heat and lets it go. Knowing God is in control of the environment gives us peace as we consider what everyone is saying about global warming. And if you’re afraid of lightening, there’s a part of Job 38 that says, “first the lightning bolts have to report to God, then He sends them on their way.” Think about that…even lightening reports to and is controlled by God. That gives us a tremendous amount of peace.

Old Testament – Job 38:1-3; 22-25  Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? What is the way to the place where the lightening is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm?

  Our second reading from the Book of Romans answers the questions that we hear when we try to talk to others about their relationship with God or going to church. Many times people will say, “Don’t talk to me; my faith is a private thing between me and God.” Our reading from Romans tells us that faith is not a private thing, it is always public, and God calls us to give a public testimony, a public confession of Jesus as Lord and Savior and that because of what Jesus did for us, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.

Epistle –Romans 10:5-11 Moses describes in this way the righteousness that is by the law: “The man who does these things will live by them”. But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring down Christ). Or ‘Who will descend into the deep’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord”, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame”.

In our Gospel Lesson, Jesus had just fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish. Immediately after that, the events from our Gospel lesson occurred. This is the basis for our sermon today.

Gospel – Matthew 14:22-33  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. 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 I. Don’t be afraid.” “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.”

  Sermon –

What we want to do this morning is put ourselves in the shoes of the disciples. In our Gospel Lesson, Jesus had just fed five thousand people - an incredible miracle! – and then He told the disciples to cross over the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is a very unsettled area and storms can come up rather suddenly; it’s a huge body of water with lots of wind, lots of rain and lots of waves. Furthermore, the disciples are crossing the Sea at nighttime, and they didn’t have the navigating devices we have today; crossing over the Sea of Galilee can be a frightful thing. But remember just who is sending them across the Sea! What do you think the disciples would do before they leave? Probably pray, the same thing you and I do before we get on an airplane today. We pray for a smooth crossing, to get safely to the other side. We don’t want wind, we don’t want waves, we don’t want anything to make us afraid. So the disciples prayed and got into the boat and out to sea and it became stormy. What did they start thinking? The same thing we think all the time, “God never answers my prayer! We’re out here and the things we prayed that would not happen are happening! There’s the wind, the waves, it’s scary, it’s the middle of the night and then there’s this ghost-like creature walking on the water! It’s scary!” In our mind we say, “Where’s God in this? I prayed for a smooth crossing but I’m sure not getting a smooth crossing!”

So let’s stop right here. Have you ever been in that situation? You’ve prayed for something and it seems as though God is doing just the opposite of what you have prayed for? It’s happened to me a million times! So what is going on? Let’s assume for a minute that God gave the disciples absolutely everything they prayed for - calm seas, just enough wind to keep the boat moving, no ghost-like creatures, everything peaceful, everything calm - an uneventful trip. Think about how the Bible would be changed if God had just listened to the disciples’ prayer for a smooth crossing. Matthew Chapter 14 beginning with verse 22 would read “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. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land. When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret” (verse 34).  What would be missing would be God’s miracle, missing would be God being with His  disciples, missing would be God calming the wind and the waves; all the good stuff would be missing! How would it be if I got up to read the Gospel Lesson today and read, “When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret.” We would we have nothing to talk about! We would miss all the good stuff! Thank you, God, that You didn’t give the disciples a smooth crossing.

What was revealed because the disciples didn’t have a smooth crossing? It was revealed that Jesus is God. We see in our Old Testament reading that God controls the wind, the waves, the snow, the hail, the lightening (Job 38). In the Gospel Lesson Jesus is controlling the same thing, controlling the physical, natural things of this world. The greatest scientists in the world cannot control the wind, the hurricanes or the tornadoes. Jesus is God. Also revealed is Jesus’ great power, and we get to see that He uses His great power to be with His people. The disciples are afraid and Jesus supernaturally comes walking to them on the water to help them. He uses His great power to be with His people and to help His people. Because God didn’t give the disciples a smooth crossing, the next thing we see is that, when we are connected to Jesus through faith, the physical laws of nature no longer apply to us. If God tells us to do something, despite the fact that the physical laws of nature say it is not possible, we can do it anyway. The laws of nature say that if you step out from a boat into the water, you’re going to sink, unless its wintertime and the water is frozen – and it wasn’t winter there! But if you are connected to Jesus and He tells you to step out of the boat, you will walk on water. The physical laws don’t always apply when we’re doing what God wants us to do. And finally we see the importance of keeping our eyes focused on Jesus. There are a lot of distractions in this world that will take your eyes off of Jesus. You have to keep focused on Him all the time because, when you’re not, you get overwhelmed by the storms of life and the things of this world.

Now let’s take this one step further. Last Sunday’s Gospel Lesson was also from Matthew Chapter 14 and beginning with verse 13 we read, “When Jesus heard what had happened (the beheading of John the Baptist), he withdrew by boat to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed Him on foot from the town. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick. As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it is already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.” The disciples wanted Jesus to send the crowds away to get food. What if Jesus has listened to them and did what they wanted him to do? The story would end right there. Verse 16 would say, “Jesus replied, ‘OK’” and it would be the end of the story – there would be no miracle of God feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish, Jesus would not have been revealed as God, God’s great power that He uses to help His people would not have been seen, it wouldn’t have been seen that the physical and material laws of the universe no longer apply to God’s people when Jesus asks them to do something, and it would not have been revealed that Jesus is Lord-keep your eyes on Him, learn as much about Him as you can, focus on him all the time. None of that would have happened. Again, another non-event. Thank God that He doesn’t always listen to us. Thank God that He lets us tell Him what we want but then He intervenes and may do something different so that His glory and power is revealed in our lives.

And let’s look at our lives. We pray that things so smoothly. We pray that we get safely to next weekend or safely to the end of the month or safely to the end of the year or to safely retirement or safely through life to heaven and that there just be not a lot of problems. There’s wrong with praying about that. But just remember that God may have other plans; He may want to do something more in your life. Did the disciples get safely to the other side? Sure, they got what they prayed for, but, boy, were they surprised at the great events along the way; amazing events along the way – all because God threw in a little extra; all because God threw in the storms of life. We don’t know what the week ahead is going to hold and if God throws some of the storms of life into your week, praise and thank Him because He is doing something. He’s doing in your life the same thing He did in the life of the disciples. He wants to reveal that Jesus is God.

Next thing that God is going to do when He adds the storms of life to your week is that He’s going to reveal His great power, He wants you to see His power at work in your life, He’s going to help you see that He’s with you. He’s going to use His great power to be with you. How does Jesus use His great power to be with us today? He used His great power to physically walk on water to the disciples when they were on the boat, and He does the same thing today. God physically comes to us today in His word – He says, “I will never leave you or forsake you”.   He also physically comes to us today in Holy Communion - what a great miracle! Jesus comes to us supernaturally by His Word in the bread and wine. Walking on water was a great miracle but if you have it happening every two weeks in Holy Communion as Jesus says, “This is my body, this is my blood” this all starts to gel and make sense. It’s incredible! God uses His great power to be with you and to help you.

An example of how God uses His great power to be with us and help us is the testimony of Jan Foyteck, our missionary to China. In her e-mail this week she wrote that she and some of the people she is doing missionary work with were swimming in a lake in China and the lake was really muddy. I know Jan as you do and I know that, at the beginning of her day she prays that God would guide her ways, order her footsteps, all would go well, and there would be no storms in life. Well, guess what? She lost her glasses when she was swimming! Now if you don’t wear glasses, you probably don’t realize how serious this is, but if you do wear glasses and lose them, particularly if you’re on a mission trip in China, that’s serious business! So what did she do? She remembered that God cares about the big things in life and He also cares when you lose your glasses so she immediately prayed that God would help her find her glasses. And when she reached down into the muddy water to search for her glasses, she pulled them out of the mud! What a great testimony of God at work, what a great testimony of God using His supernatural power to help His people. Why did God do that? Because God wanted not only to help Jan as she is doing her missionary work, giving her encouragement that comes from seeing His miracles, but also because she now has a testimony. In her witness to the people in China she now has a testimony telling other how God helped her find her glasses! God lets those storms of life come – lost glasses, in Jan’s case - to reveal His power, to reveal that He’s there, to reveal that He helps us, to give us a testimony.

And when the storms come into your life this week, God wants to reveal how the physical laws in the universe no longer apply to you because of your connection with Him. The physical laws of the universe no longer applied to Peter; he got out of the boat and walked on water. I’ll give you some examples. You can’t, on your own, by your own power, believe the Bible and believe that Jesus is Lord and Savior; you can only do it by God’s power. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 12:3 “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the power of the Holy Spirit.” So sitting here this morning and being a believer is just as great a miracle as Peter walking on the water. To do both you need the supernatural power of God in your life. Because God is working in your life, the physical laws of the universe no longer apply to you.

Another example is forgiveness. How often do you hear people say, “Well, I just can’t put it behind me, I can’t forgive, I can’t do it!” People say that because unforgiveness is one of the physical laws of this universe. When you are hurt, when someone does something bad to you, it’s incredibly, incredibly impossible to forgive, to put the hurt behind you and move on. We saw that in action this week on TV. Did you watch Brett Favre, the former quarterback of the Green Bay Packers? You’re probably thinking, “Oh no, another Green Bay Packers story from Pastor!”, but this is about moving on after someone hurts you. Brett said that he had to move on, he couldn’t play for the Packers anymore because some of the hurtful things that management said during their negations were hurtful and that he didn’t know how to put it behind him and continue his relationship with the team.   My response to him is, “Brett, read your wife’s book!” She is a Christian and knows the power of God’s forgiveness. His testimony just shows that the physical laws of the universe say that if someone hurts you, you can’t move on with them, you have to leave and go someplace else. Well, the Bible says differently. The Bible says those physical laws no longer apply to you. The Bible says that when the forgiveness of Jesus Christ that God has for you hits home, then we can forgive and we can make peace and we can be reconciled. That’s what God enables you to do. It was a great miracle when Peter got out of the boat and walked on water and another great miracle happens when you can forgive someone. You also need God to enable you to, as our Four Promises of Forgiveness says, treat the person as though it never happened. Do that, through God’s great power, and you can forgive and be reconciled and treat the person like it never happened. That’s the power of God working, the same miracle as walking on water.

And a couple more examples. How about rising from the dead? What’s easier to do, rise from the dead or walk on water? Both equally as tough, for both you need the power of God. Remember that, because of your connection with Christ, you will rise from the dead on the last day. Incredible! And the last example is tithing. What’s harder to do, to walk on water or give 10% of your paycheck for the Lord’s work? When you give 10%   for the Lord’s work, you only have 90% of your paycheck left but still have the buying power of more than 100%! That’s as great of a miracle of walking on water, you need God’s help to do both! Because of your connection with Jesus Christ, He says, for all people of all times, give 10% of your paycheck for the Lord’s work and the 90% you have left will have the buying power of more than 100%! What a great miracle! The laws of nature don’t apply to you anymore because Christ is in your life, because you believe in His Word, and because you’re actually getting out of the boat. For those of you here that work God’s financial plan, you will have the buying power or more than 100% of your paycheck!

All these things God will do when the storms of life come. So let them come. Pray to God about what you want and what you need; we all want things to go smoothly but when they don’t - hold on to your hats - because something great is going to happen, hold on because Jesus is going to be revealing himself as God and Lord, you’re going to see His great power, you’re going to see that He’s using his great power to be with you and help you in your situation, and you’re going to see His great power enabling you to do some incredible things. The physical laws of the universe no longer apply to you. Keep your eyes on Jesus and you’ll have a great experience!   

Prayer -