Miracle of Our Lord Walking on Water #1

Driving home: They were repeating in their own way and in a sense too with the desires to advance his cause the very temptation which Satan had set before him on the mountain when he offered him the crown without the cross.

A perceptive commentator's words are quoted to explain the Jewish misunderstanding of Messiah's royalty, highlighting their desire for a temporal king and the temptation of a crown without a cross.

and warped Jewish expectations. One perceptive commentator writing on this fact wrote as follows, The feeding of the multitude had roused them to such a pitch of enthusiasm that they were for taking Jesus by force and making him king. What a contradiction! I thought a king rules people seek to rule in order to make him a king.

16:23 - 16:54 Read in full sermon

Driving home: They were repeating in their own way and in a sense too with the desires to advance his cause the very temptation which Satan had set before him on the mountain when he offered him the crown without the cross.

The request of James and John through their mother for positions of earthly preferment is cited as evidence of the disciples' own carnal expectations of Christ's kingdom.

They also longed to see him a king as the request of James and John presented through their mother and the question put to them by their Lord just before his ascension fully proved. Do you remember? Later on the mother of two of the disciples come and say, Can my sons be sort of your prime ministers? One on the left and one on the right thinking of an earthly kingdom with earthly preferment.

18:20 - 18:47 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin highlights Jesus' deliberate actions: first, seeing His disciples 'distressed in rowing' from the mountain, and then walking towards them on the water, on a course that…

Martin recounts his own experience rowing intensely for half an hour as a teenager to help the audience grasp the physical agony the disciples endured rowing for six hours.

And now Mark tells us that they were tortured, distressed, tested to the limits in rowing. Have any of you rowed a boat with great intensity for as long as half an hour? I can remember back when I was in good shape for a teenager. Going out in the little bay there in Stamford, Connecticut, where I was reared and occasionally having a little rowboat race with some of my buddies.

28:20 - 28:48 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin highlights Jesus' deliberate actions: first, seeing His disciples 'distressed in rowing' from the mountain, and then walking towards them on the water, on a course that…

The destructive power of Hurricane Gloria's waves on the Atlantic City boardwalk is used to illustrate the tremendous force of the waves the disciples faced on the Sea of Galilee.

Now some of you who saw the pictures of Gloria, remember the kind of waves that she was causing to dash upon the boardwalk in Atlantic City? And some of us kind of rejoiced, not for any Christians who suffered in Atlantic City, but that its worst fury in Jersey was vented upon that hellhole there along the boardwalk in Atlantic City. The tremendous force of those waves that tore up all of the construction of those boardwalks. Well, imagine that kind of tremendous pressure pounding upon the ship and the disciples seeking to keep the bow of the ship into it.

30:11 - 30:52 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The disciples' terrified reaction to seeing Jesus, mistaking Him for an apparition and crying out in fear, is described, emphasizing their weariness and superstitions.

The story of the Witch of Endor is referenced to explain the disciples' understanding of an 'apparition' as a visible, insubstantial form, contrasting it with Jesus' flesh and bones.

We would say, and then that trouble was focused upon a conviction that what they saw was an apparition. What they saw was what the witch of Endor saw when she, quote, called Saul. It was in their instance of apparitions in which there would be visible forms of people, either dead or living, but not the people themselves. If you reached out to touch the apparition, your hand would go through it.

37:05 - 37:39 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The disciples' terrified reaction to seeing Jesus, mistaking Him for an apparition and crying out in fear, is described, emphasizing their weariness and superstitions.

The disciples' reaction to Peter at the door in Acts 11, thinking he was his ghost, is used to show that even Spirit-filled people can retain superstitions.

Still filled with many superstitions even after Pentecost. You remember when God delivers Peter and Acts 11? They say, oh, that's not Peter at the door, that's his ghost. Even people full of the Holy Spirit don't get rid of all their superstitions.

39:11 - 39:25 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin shares an illustration of a child's unbelief in walking on water, then exhorts listeners to believe in Jesus as God, who can enter their life's storms, and to pray for…

A story of a three-year-old girl trying to walk on bathwater and declaring 'I don't believe it' is used to illustrate both the natural human inability to walk on water and the unbelief that can arise from it.

I can remember, this is a true incident.

63:46 - 63:47 Read in full sermon