Mark chapter 6 and we'll read
from verse 30. No, we won't. We'll turn over
the page and we will move a little bit further down. Verse 45, I'm sorry. Verse 45. Mark chapter 6 and verse 45. And straightway he constrained
his disciples to get into the ship and to go to the other side
before unto Bethsaida, while he sent away the people. And when he had sent them away,
he departed into a mountain to pray. And when even was come,
the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the
land. And he saw them toiling in rowing,
for the wind was contrary unto them. And about the fourth watch
of the night he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and would
have passed by them. But when they saw him walking
upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried
out, for they all saw him and were troubled. And immediately
he talked with them, and saith unto them, Be of good cheer,
it is I, be not afraid. And he went up unto them into
the ship, and the wind ceased, and they were sore amazed in
themselves beyond measure, and wondered. For they considered
not the miracle of the loaves, for their heart was hardened. And when they had passed over
they came into the land of Gennesaret and drew to the shore. And when
they were come up out of the ship, straightway they knew him. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. I think I read a couple more
verses than I intended to there. I had misplaced my reading texts. Okay. We've been thinking. recently of the miraculous power
of the Lord Jesus Christ, whereby he healed the sick, he fed the
hungry, he delivered the possessed, he quelled the waves, instilled
the wind, he raised the dead. And today We're going to add
to that amazing list that the Lord Jesus Christ also walked
on water. He walked upon the sea. These miracles that we have been
considering together, they demonstrated, they proved the power of Jesus
of Nazareth. They showed him to be who he
really was. They established his identity. They spoke and undergirded the
authority that he had. And undoubtedly, they gained
him an audience. gained him a hearing amongst
the people. Because he did these miracles,
because he performed these wonders, the people rallied to him, gathered
to him, ran out of the cities and out of the towns and villages
and came and presented themselves before him and he was able to
teach. But we would be wrong to imagine
that the Lord in performing these miracles was motivated in gaining
an audience or in some way establishing his personality or raising his
profile, getting him a reputation. And in many ways, the opposite
actually is true. It almost seems as if the Lord
realised that these miracles would be easily misunderstood
and misapplied by the people that they were performed before. And that is true here in this
miracle that we have before us today, or at least in what was
happening before us. Having fed these 5,000 men, plus perhaps women and children,
so maybe as many as 10,000 people. But having fed the 5,000, we
discover that something stirred amongst that group of people. They were so amazed at the miracle
that they saw happening They were so amazed that the Lord
from these five loaves and two fishes had fed the multitude
and gathered in twelve baskets of remnants afterwards. that
they were immediately motivated to make this man their king. They wanted to make Jesus their
king. And we read in John chapter six
and verse 14 and the verses following, then those men, when they had
seen the miracle that Jesus did, that is the feeding of the 5,000,
said, this is of a truth, that prophet that should come into
the world. Remember that. Note that. They
recognised that this was the one of whom Moses had spoken. This was the one that the prophets
were identifying in the Old Testament scriptures. They said, of a truth,
this man is the one. This is the Messiah. This is
that prophet that would come. and they decided that they would
take him by force. Jesus perceived that they would
come and take him by force to make him king. And so he departed
into a mountain himself alone. Now this is very interesting,
I think, because it helps us understand what was transpiring
here in this miracle. These people understood something
about the identity of the Lord Jesus Christ because of the amazing
miracle that he had performed. But they were looking for the
wrong Messiah. There was this anticipation,
there was this Desire that they would experience,
that they would find the Messiah. That there was in the society
at that time, this great belief that the Messiah was imminent.
John the Baptist had come. There had been a religious movement. And now this man, Jesus Christ,
Jesus of Nazareth, was saying amazing things. was performing
amazing miracles and they believed that this was the one. But they
were looking for the wrong Messiah. They wanted a Messiah that would
fit their mould, their ambitions. They were looking for a Messiah
that would establish their Jewish kingdom. That great Davidic reign
of a previous age. And like many people today that
look for a wrong Jesus, they endeavour to fit Jesus into their
mould and to fulfil their own ideas of what religion should
be and what indeed religion is. These people wanted to make Jesus
king. And many, many people today say
they want to make Jesus their king. But Jesus had to separate
from them because they wanted to make him a king after their
own image and according to their own standards. And that's where
religion is for so many people even today. Often, when it came
to the miracles, the Lord instructed those who benefited from those
miracles not to tell anyone what had happened, not to say who
had healed them. And indeed, he performed many
of his miracles only for a few people. Often it was just his
disciples. And that reminds us surely that
these miracles were geared to teaching and preparing his disciples
for their apostolic ministry rather than for impressing the
crowds. That's not what they were for.
They were signs and they were wonders, but they signified something
deeper, something more important. The crowds found them wonderful. but they didn't understand the
significance. That was restricted for the disciples
and for the followers of the Lord and for his church to read
and understand and grasp down through the ages. These were
not tricks to impress men and women of his age. They were an
in-training experience to equip the disciples, who would become
the apostles, who would represent the Lord Jesus Christ, who would
carry the gospel to the ends of the earth and who would lay
down the foundation of the New Testament Church. Have you ever
wondered why it took the Lord Jesus Christ three years from
the beginning of his ministry until he went to the cross? Why did it take so long? Why
did the Lord just not be revealed and then be crucified? The transaction
of the cross, the shedding of the blood, the significance of
the sacrifice, the suretyship and substitution for His people,
that was towards His Father, not anything to do with the people. But the reason for those three
years was because that was the length of time that it took for
the disciples to go through this apprenticeship. That was what
the disciples needed in order to learn the gospel at the lips
and by the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. And through this
prism, I hope we've been understanding something about the significance
both of the parables and the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I think we can see something of this miracle also today, the
miracle of the Lord Jesus Christ walking on water. And I've noted
three things that I want to draw to your attention from this amazing,
and indeed we would have to confess surprising, incident. I mean walking on water for the
good of the disciples to see and to observe. What was that
about? It wasn't done for the crowds,
it was done for the disciples. What was he showing them? What
did it signify? I want us to take three things
from this, not altogether due to the walking on the water,
but the first thing is this, I want us to notice that the
Lord Jesus Christ took time alone with his father, which was the
reason for the fact that the Lord was separated from his disciples. I want us to notice that the
Lord Jesus Christ was teaching his disciples that the kingdom
of God is spiritual and not temporal. And I want us to note the disciples
continuing dullness and slowness in grasping the identity of the
Lord Jesus. So these are the three things
that I just want to touch upon lightly and move through these
verses before us. So the first one is this, that
Jesus took time alone with his father. I cannot but imagine
that the disciples were somewhat surprised when the Lord sent
them away on their own. They may even have been a little
bit annoyed He remained with that huge number
of people and he sent the disciples in their boat back across the
lake by themselves. It does not appear to have given
them any explanation as to why, simply that he was going to dismiss
the crowd and then he was going to pray. Perhaps the Lord did
this for the protection of the disciples, perceiving as he did
that the crowd were contemplating making him king. The Lord realised
that he had to defuse what could have become a dangerous situation
if indeed the crowd had tried to make him their king by force.
which seems to be implied by John's account in John chapter
6. So he is perhaps protecting his
disciples by this action. But Mark tells us that then,
having dismissed the crowd, the Lord departed into a mountain
to pray. And here the Lord was alone with
his father. I don't know what he prayed,
we're not told, but it seems clear that the Lord treasured
these rare occasions when he and his father communed together. When the pleasure of the father
rested upon the son. Some prayers of The Lord, we
are given the words, the content, the text, but not here. And I would suggest that that
probably means that the disciples did not even know what transpired
between the father and the son, at least on this occasion, when
the Lord had gone into the mountain to pray. But it was sufficient
for them to know that he did. it was sufficient for them to,
as it were, see him go into the mountain alone to pray for his
father. And surely that is the lesson
that they were given here by the Lord. That the Lord Jesus
Christ prayed to his father, taught them and teaches us by
word and example to do the same. the Lord Jesus Christ opened
his heart to his Father. And the disciples marked that
fact for their own lives and for their own ministry hereafter. Let us learn the lesson of this
too. It's not simply what the Lord
Jesus Christ taught them in his doctrine. It's what the Lord
Jesus Christ showed them in his actions. Our faith isn't just
a doctrinal confession, but it is a living relationship with
God. With God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We should speak to the Lord as
we speak to a friend. The Lord Jesus Christ went alone
and he prayed to his Father. We should come to God as we would
come to our Father, which art in heaven. And when our mind
runs to the challenges of our everyday life's experience, When
we come to face our fears and our trials and our temptations,
that's no time for formal prayers. It's a time for us to be leaning
upon the Lord, pleading for His help, asking for His assistance
in a very urgent, in a very earnest way, as we would friend. The scripture gives us our doctrine
and we love and we value what the Lord has revealed but it's
as a means to the end of illuminating our way in this world. Our understanding of doctrine,
our understanding of scripture is like the lights on a dark
night that lead us along the road of our pilgrimage, that
consolidate our understanding, that strengthen us in our relationship
with God. Our big systematic theologies
that we might have and we might read and refer to from time to
time to get those nodules of doctrinal truth. They're only
useful, those systematic theologies, if by standing on them we are
inched closer to the Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to know about the
nature of God. I want you to know about the
nature of man. I want you and I both to understand
something of the representative work of the Lord Jesus Christ
in the covenant of grace and peace. These are beautiful, beautiful
doctrines. These are the pillars upon which
our faith is built. But they must inform our fellowship
with God and with the Lord Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit
because doctrine doesn't save us. It's God who saves us. It's the Lord Jesus Christ who
saves us. It's the Father who loves us. and Christ who loves us. We delight to spend time alone
and communing and contemplating the ones that we love here upon
earth. And that relationship is to be
as clearly understood between God and his people. That's what
the Lord Jesus Christ was teaching us here. And having said, as
I've just done, that we do not know what the Lord prayed, I
might hazard a guess that he was praying to his Father for
his disciples and for his other sheep. and that he prayed for
you and for me, the other sheep that he had that were not of
this fold. Think on that, think on that. In our troubles, we ask sometimes and we appreciate
the prayers of our friends on our behalf. But the Lord Jesus
Christ has already prayed for you and me. He has already interceded
with His Father on our behalf and He is interceding still for
us in heaven with His Father for our good. So here is a lesson
for us in the first instance here, that the Lord Jesus Christ
spent time alone with His Father. And we should learn to nurture
that relationship with God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
through those personal times of praying and intercession with
our God, as the Lord Jesus Christ provided as a pattern. Second
thing I want to draw your attention to was the fact that the kingdom
of God is spiritual, because surely this was a lesson too,
that the Lord was teaching his disciples. Had the Lord Jesus
Christ wished to establish a kingdom on earth, if he'd wanted to set
up a throne there in Galilee or in Israel at that time, if
he had wanted to depose Herod and challenge Rome, Well, this
was his moment. This was the opportunity. 5,000
men could light a fire that would blaze through the whole land. But that's not the kingdom of
God. The Lord Jesus Christ says that the kingdom of God is not
an external kingdom. It's not a worldly kingdom. It's
not a kingdom of power and force and military might. The kingdom
of God is within you. And the disciples were struggling
to grasp this. Indeed, even up to the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ, some three years after he began his
ministry with these men, their notions of an earthly kingdom
with an earthly king still proved hard to shake. And that was their
hardness of heart that Mark refers to here. They saw the power in
the Lord Jesus Christ. They recognised Him to be Christ,
as indeed did the 5,000 whom He fed with the loaves and the
fishies. They believed that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Son
of God. They confessed it to be so. They
saw that this was God on earth. they still limited their views
to the Jewish people. They still perceived the kingdom
in terms of David's restored throne and Israel's ascendant
empire. We build no kingdom on earth,
but we do preach. forgiveness by the blood of Jesus
Christ. And we preach a personal relationship
with God, a kingdom that is being gathered by the preaching of
the gospel and the bringing in of the Lord's sheep into his
fold. That was the lesson. The disciples
here on the Sea of Galilee that night, they rode against the
prevailing wind. It appears that they rode all
night and they had only made 25 or 30 furlongs. A few hundred yards. They had
rode all night and made little headway because They were relying
upon their physical strength and soon their power was sapped. That lesson there is that we
are not fighting against physical opponents but against spiritual
opponents. Remember that these men had just
returned from their own introduction to preaching and healing, and
they were flushed with success. That's what had taken them out
into the wilderness in the first instance, where the 5,000 followed
and subsequently were fed. So we're only talking about the
same day. But this feeding of the 5,000
and the subsequent walking upon the water of the Lord, it was
opening their view to a wider, broader, worldwide ministry that
was yet not clear. to the understanding of these
men. This kingdom of God, it wouldn't just dominate Galilee
or Israel or the Jewish people. It would stretch from sea to
sea, from country to country, from continent to continent. Not by physical power, not by
the strength and the energy of these 12 men rowing, as it were,
against the wind. Not by political might or by
military power, but in the hearts of men and women. The Lord Jesus
Christ said, the kingdom of God is within you. It's an internal
thing. It's a spiritual creation. It's
a soul experience. It's new life joined together
with the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ walking
upon the water to the comfort and protection and deliverance
of his people teaches us that his word and his presence reaches
his people and enters into their hearts, enters into their experience
beyond natural ability, beyond natural expectation. Furthermore,
the immediate arrival of the disciples' ship at its destination,
despite the fact that they had only rowed 20 or 30 furlongs,
the immediate arrival of the ship at the destination upon
Christ entering the ship, again was a miracle in its own right.
And it surely taught the disciples, as it should teach us, not to
look to ourselves to gain the destination, but to look to God
the Holy Spirit for the building of that kingdom. To look to Christ. Not to lean on our own strength,
not to lean on our own understanding. Beautiful little verse in Zechariah
chapter 4, verse 6. It says, Not by might, nor by
power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Not by might,
nor by power, but by my Spirit saith the Lord of hosts. So the
Lord taught his disciples and he teaches us with them the value
of communion with God in prayer. And the Lord taught his disciples
and us with them that the kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom,
a worldwide kingdom. that is enacted by God the Holy
Spirit applying the blessings and the benefits and the gifts
of God's grace through the accomplishments of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
thirdly, and here's our final point here today, verse 48, we're
told that he cometh unto them walking upon the water and he
would have passed by them. It's interesting. That's an interesting
comment from Mark. He says that the Lord Jesus Christ
cometh unto them walking upon the sea and would have passed
by them. I wonder what that means. Here's what I take it to mean.
I take it to mean that the Lord was moving faster than the ship. Despite the energies of these
men, despite all of their pulling on those oars, or all of their
efforts, because the wind was contrary, they didn't have a
sail up, they were rowing, but despite all of their efforts,
this figure that was walking towards them on the sea was coming
towards them faster than they could get out of the road. The
figure appeared out of the semi-darkness, and it was gaining on them quickly. And they were afraid. They were
afraid because immediately their minds ran to it being a ghost
or a spirit or a demon pursuing them on the water and they couldn't
escape out of its grasp because it was gaining on them. You can
almost begin to sense the build-up of anxiety in the hearts of these
people as they saw that figure and realised that it was gaining
on them. And it drew from them a cry of
fear. In that moment of confusion,
in that moment of anxiety, they cried out in fear, they cried
for help. And at the moment that they cried,
the Lord answered their cry. At once, we're told, the Lord
spoke to reassure his disciples. They misunderstood what they
saw with their eyes, but they heard the Lord's voice with their
ears. And what did he say? He said,
be of good cheer. It is I, be not afraid. What are we to make of this? What are we to make of this little
incident, this little episode? I think this, that even those
inexplicable things those unforeseen things, those experiences of
life that we didn't see coming, those things that are bigger
than us, that are beyond us, that we can't understand, those
things that we say, why is this happening to me? What is it that's
going on? What is it that the Lord has
got to show me in this experience? That these inexplicable, unforeseen, vehicles and means by which our
loving, caring friend takes occasion to come to us and comfort us
and encourage us. I think before already I've read
some sections from William Cooper's poem or William Cooper's hymn. Here's what it says. God moves
in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps
in the sea and rides upon the storm. So there's the picture
of the Lord planting his footsteps in the sea. But here's what Cooper
encourages us to realise. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage
take. The clouds ye so much dread are
big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head. Now
I know right now, I know that in the lives and experiences
of many of you who are listening to me, that there are troubles
and there are trials going on right now. And I know that there
are others on their way ready to overtake us. And try as we might, we cannot
outrun those troubles. or as the disciples might have
been trying to do, outrow them. And seeing them and experiencing
them, fear grips our hearts and we cry out. But then, from the
very source of our anxiety, the Lord speaks, and he speaks with
comforting words. He speaks with words which says,
be of good cheer, it is I, be not afraid. The lesson for the
disciples was that in the very thing that they feared coming
upon them was their help and deliverance. That the Lord is
in every fearful circumstance to do his people good. Can we
get our heads around that? Can we see that? When our Saviour
went to the cross for us, He took every vengeful blow, every
punishing stroke, every damning judgement against us into His
own soul. and he bore it to the full extent
so that it's gone. It's taken away. He carried it
away. There is no more divine anger. There is no more judgement or
wrath for us to fear. Now that's easy to say, right? But it's harder to believe. And
the reality of our humanity is that it is nigh impossible to
feel. Because like these disciples,
we often fail to recognise the Saviour, even though we have
that experience of having seen Him do so many miracles in our
life and being so faithful to us, even just a short time before. We forget the loaves when the
wind is contrary, when our strength is sapped, and when something
beyond our control is creeping up behind us. William Cooper
continues, he says, Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but
trust him for his grace. Behind a frowning providence,
he hides a smiling face. That's exactly what was happening
here to the disciples. and let that be our takeaway
from today. Let us hear the Lord's sweet
words, despite the blast of wind in our face, despite the roar
of the waves, and above the noise of our own fearful cries, let
us hear the Lord's words, be of good cheer, it is I, be not
afraid. Whatever our trouble, The Lord
Jesus Christ is in it to bless our souls by it. Trusting in
the Lord Jesus Christ, we have nothing to fear. The Lord is
in it. He is present. And soon it will
be clear what blessings he means to give us by it. Brothers and sisters, the Lord
will amaze us. We marvel at the mercy that brought
God to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. We wonder at the
love that took him to the cross to die in our place, to shed
his blood for us. We're humbled by the grace that
forgives, that justifies, and that promises glory hereafter
to us who are sinners. And we will yet have cause to
thank Him for delivering us out of all our troubles. And we will
yet have cause and reason to praise Him for His comfort and
for His love in our troubles. We shall experience His peace
and His goodness far beyond all that we deserve. and we shall confess that it
is all of his goodness and it is all of his grace. This Jesus
who walked on water is our saviour and our friend and of such as
these are the lessons he will teach us. May he do so today
and all days of our pilgrimage in this world. Amen.