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Redeemer Community Church is located in the historic Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, AL. Our church family exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
For more information on who we are, what we believe, or how to join us, please visit our website at rccbirmingham.org.
If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to Matthew 14. Matthew 14. It's good to see some of our college students trickling back in. We've missed you over the break. Did somebody laugh at that?
Joel Brooks:That was you, Sarah. You laughed out loud. It wasn't over that. Was Jen. You're like, do I have to separate y'all?
Joel Brooks:We did. We we missed you over the break. And you might not know we started a new series last week. We are going through first Peter. However, we are going to spend thirteen weeks just looking at the first word in first Peter, which is Peter.
Joel Brooks:We're gonna be looking at his life. And really, what we're gonna do is Peter gives us a great lens. We're not gonna look at all of his life, just some snapshots of his life, but that will give us a great lens as to what it looks like to follow Jesus. Jesus' first words to Peter were, follow me. His last words to Peter were, follow me.
Joel Brooks:And so, it seems to me to if you wanna understand what it looks like to follow Jesus, we should look at Peter. He shows us what it looks like to follow him from an initial call all the way to the end. And this morning, we're gonna look at what probably is is what Peter is most famous for, and that is him walking on water. And so, we'll look at Matthew chapter 14. We're actually gonna begin reading in verse 19 there.
Joel Brooks:Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. And taking the loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up 12 baskets full of the broken pieces left over, and those who ate were about 5,000 men, besides women and children.
Joel Brooks:Immediately, he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone. But the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night, he came to them, walking on the sea.
Joel Brooks:But, when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said, it is a ghost. And, they cried out in fear. But, immediately, Jesus spoke to them saying, take heart, it is I, and do not be afraid. And Peter answered him, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. He said, come.
Joel Brooks:So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and began and beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt? And, when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And, those in the boat worshiped him, saying, truly, you are the son of God.
Joel Brooks:This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be God. You would pray with me. Father, what a joy it is to get to be here, to be gathered as your children in this place, to celebrate as a family, our Father and our savior. So we Lord, we don't take this time for granted.
Joel Brooks:Thank you for speaking to us through your words. I pray that you would open up our hearts to where that we might receive what you would have for us this morning. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. So last year, if you remember, we went through the gospel of Mark, and we actually looked at this story. We looked at the story of Jesus walking on the water. But when Mark gives his account of this story, he left out one one minor detail. He says nothing about Peter.
Joel Brooks:He never mentions anything about Peter walking on the water. And that's pretty strange considering Mark was a disciple of Peter. And actually, the Gospel of Mark, many people, they just see that as really Peter's Gospel that Mark recorded down. Yet, for some reason, Mark chose not to include this. Neither do any of the other gospels.
Joel Brooks:We're not sure why. Perhaps they they thought that Peter was not integral to the story, or perhaps, they just felt bad kinda pouring it on Peter. I mean, Peter, he fails so often. They just didn't want to highlight another one of his failures. We don't know.
Joel Brooks:But, Matthew has no problem highlighting Peter's failures. Actually, he does that often through his gospel. I don't know what Peter did to Matthew, but, Matthew highlights his failures time and time again. And so, we get this story, which we're really thankful. I mean, think about it.
Joel Brooks:If if we didn't have this story of Peter walking on water, that would have gotten rid of half of your junior high devotionals. Always, this story just always came up. If Matthew had not recorded this story, we wouldn't have the nine minute long worship song Oceans, nor would I have ever attempted to walk across a pool, fully clothed, when I was a child. So thank you, Matthew. The question is this, why does Matthew, why did he decide to include this story?
Joel Brooks:What's it about? Is it really about how we can walk on water? That that's what God wants us to do, to to take a step out and to walk on water. As I've been thinking through this text this week, I keep thinking of all the miracles in the book of Acts. You actually see, when you go through Acts after Pentecost, you see the disciples performing most of the miracles that Jesus had already performed.
Joel Brooks:And so so they do things like, they cast out demons, they're healing the blind and the lame, they're casting out different diseases. You even have Peter and Paul, they actually raised somebody from the dead. But there are a few miracles that they never attempt. They never it never crossed their mind to try. And these miracles would have come in handy.
Joel Brooks:For instance, although the church had this calling to take care of the poor, to feed the poor, never once did they pray that God would miraculously multiply food like Jesus did when he fed the 5,000. That would have really come in handy. But instead, the church, they were called to sacrificially give in order to buy food for the poor. Peter, at one point Jesus told Peter to go get a fish, got the fish, pulled out a coin, said, that's how you're going to pay your taxes. You never have that again.
Joel Brooks:Now, from this point after that, the disciples had to pony up their own money to pay their taxes. Paul, at the end of Acts, he goes to great lengths to to describe this terrible storm he was in. He was in a ship, and he was seasick for fourteen days, yet never once did it occur to him to just say, you know what? Why don't I just walk on the water to the land? Or why don't I just pray that God would calm the storm and say, cease, be still, and it would be still.
Joel Brooks:He never even considered doing that. Instead, after fourteen days of seasickness, the ship wrecks, he's thrown into the sea, and he has to swim to shore. So, not all of the miracles were meant for the disciples to later try to do. Some certainly seem unique to Jesus. And, these unique ones, he seems to perform in order to reveal something new about him and also to teach us about a particular way we're supposed to live.
Joel Brooks:That's what we see here. What is Jesus revealing about himself, and how is he teaching us to live in this miracle, in this moment? So let's walk through the story. Story begins in verse 22 with a sense of urgency. We read, immediately, he made the disciples get into the boat.
Joel Brooks:He immediately made them get into the boat. Those words made him, they're they're actually a meaning, he forced them. They're they're powerful words. He he demanded or forced that they get into the boat, even though they likely didn't want to. The reason that Jesus was doing this was because right before this, or immediately before this, he had just fed the 5,000 people, the 5,000 men.
Joel Brooks:And we read from John's account of that story that they were trying to force Jesus to be king after this. The reason only the men are recorded is is the author's way of letting you know Jesus had an army at his disposal, and they were trying to make him a king. Think of the powerful army you could have when you had a supply chain like that. You could just multiply food. And Jesus sees what the crowd is trying to do, and he wants his disciples to have no part of it.
Joel Brooks:He knows they could get caught up and be swayed with the crowd, and so he immediately removes them, and he forces them onto a boat. They likely had to be forced on this boat because they're tired, it's night, they don't understand the reasons why they have to go, and they also see a storm brewing. It's a terrible time to get into a boat. But Jesus says, I'm not joking. Get in.
Joel Brooks:And he sends them out. And sure enough, they get hit by a storm, they get blown off course, and they spend eight hours in the dark just being hammered by the waves. It's a fun night for them. Let's just stop here for a moment and put ourselves in their shoes. These guys have got to be emotionally, physically drained at this point.
Joel Brooks:This whole story, it actually begins with chain of events happening earlier in which Jesus, he just got word that his his friend, John the Baptist, his cousin, was beheaded. And, when he and the disciples heard this word, it just was devastating. We read that Jesus withdrew, and he was going to a lonely place. He just wants to get away by himself with his disciples and grieve. But as he goes off to that lonely place, he finds 5,000 men have followed him there, along with the women and the children.
Joel Brooks:It's 20,000 something people. So he can't get away, and so he has compassion on them. He teaches them, and then he feeds them just from a few loaves and fish. But then, they're trying to make him king, and so at that point, he forces the disciples into a boat, and he sends them off. And so, they don't have even a moment now to to reflect on the miracle they just saw, to celebrate that miracle.
Joel Brooks:Jesus says, no, and they're immediately forced into the next situation, where they're laboring all night just being hammered by the waves. So they've had no time to process or grieve the death of a friend and mentor. They've had no time to celebrate or reflect on one of Jesus' greatest miracles that incorporated them into, and they haven't had a moment of rest. Because the moment they got in that boat, the storm hits, and they're just being hammered by the waves. Can any of you relate to that?
Joel Brooks:Any of you ever ever feel like that? Like you've just had these moments in your life where you're just running from one thing to another to another and to another. You know, you get up in the morning, you're already late for your first meeting, so you're brushing your teeth in the car, or maybe shaving or putting on your makeup in the car. You know, you get to your first meeting, and then you have to rush out of that because you're already kind of late for the other. But but as you're driving, you're like, oh, I need to call my mom.
Joel Brooks:I haven't talked to her in a while, and you're you're talking to your mom on the phone, she's telling you about the different people who are sick or who've died. You don't have a moment to process that before going to the next meeting. And then, it's just it's like relentless. You you just want to At some point, you're like, can we just have a time out? Just a time out on life, people.
Joel Brooks:Time out. Let's all take a deep breath. Let's take some time to grieve. Let's take some time to celebrate. Let's take some time to reflect.
Joel Brooks:That's what you wanna do. But instead, you're just hit by the next wave, and the next wave, and the next wave. Any of you relate? Some of you are like, that's my entire life. You just described my life.
Joel Brooks:Well, if that's your life, you might need to look in the mirror and make some life changes because this was a unique occasion for for the disciples. Their lives were not always like this. This was a season. But if you find yourself in this season, take comfort. Although the disciples were just relentlessly being driven from place to place and physically and emotionally drained, they're exactly where the Lord wants them.
Joel Brooks:They're in this place because the Lord put them there. If they thought obeying Jesus was gonna mean an easier, more simple life, they were wrong because he has literally forced them into this position. And if you find yourself there, know this, Jesus sees you, and he's coming. He's coming. Throughout history, the the church has actually seen this story as a picture of itself.
Joel Brooks:The church is like the disciples in the boat. It's like the the few people trying to follow Jesus, and we're just struggling away amidst the chaos, amidst the dangers, and Jesus is not physically with us. Where is he? He's up on the mountain, or he has ascended into the heavens, and he is praying for us. And he sees us, and he will come to us.
Joel Brooks:This is where we find ourselves as a church. After Jesus prays for them, he does come to them by walking on the water. We don't know what this looks like. I I mean, I've got questions when I read this. I mean, does was the waves that just kinda smooth out in front of him, so he's, like, just just walking on flat water, or is he riding up and down on the waves?
Joel Brooks:We're not given any of those details. We are just told that he walked on the water. And Jesus had to know that this is how he was going to come to them. Because earlier, when he sent the disciples away, he sent them away on the only boat. So he knew there would be no other option, which means that this walking on water was always part of his plan.
Joel Brooks:Coming to them late after they've been struggling all in the dark and in the storm, that was always part of his plan. Everything is going exactly according to Jesus' plan in order that he can reveal his glory to them at the right moment. You know, there's something about this miracle. Something about this miracle that this it's it's more glorious than the others, isn't it? It seems to be a little bit more miraculous than the other miracles.
Joel Brooks:I mean, some of you, you might be sitting in here, and you're like, you know, I really don't struggle with Jesus healing people, or or maybe Jesus casting out demons, those kind of miracles, but walking on water? It just seems too miraculous for any any person to actually do. I actually was reading through some commentaries, and two of the commentators said this, when preaching on the historicity or preaching on this text, the historicity of this story should not be pressed on your congregation. I'm going to press. Guys, the center of our faith is that Jesus rose from the dead.
Joel Brooks:If Jesus rose from the dead, he could certainly walk in the water. What Jesus is do doing here is he is revealing himself as a unique son of God. He's revealing himself as the Lord here. Keep this in mind. As he is walking to his disciples here, they have no idea that their savior is on the way.
Joel Brooks:I mean, how could they? From their perspective, absolutely nothing has changed about their circumstances. The storm is still raging. They're still just as tired as before. They're still getting hammered by the waves.
Joel Brooks:Nothing has changed. And yet, Jesus miraculously is already on the way to them. Everything's going according to his plan, even though they can't see it. I have this this happened to me four years ago to Lauren and I, and this is kind of what I think of when I think of this story. Lauren and I were at this point where we had a bunch of unexpected expenses, and we didn't know how we were gonna really be paying for these things.
Joel Brooks:And so the pressures of that led me to do what maybe some of you do, which is clean. Not prayer. It wasn't prayer. But when there's a lot of anxieties hitting, I just start cleaning things. It's it's like, this is how I could get order.
Joel Brooks:I can order this To let you know just how bad the financial situation was, we were actually, Lauren and I, pulling out our beds, and we were vacuuming the dust from underneath them. And when we did that in our room, and we pulled out our bed, we found an envelope under it. And we pulled it up, and it was a letter that somebody had written us over a year earlier. And in the letter was a thousand dollars. And I was like, oh my gosh.
Joel Brooks:And then I was just thinking about that that I talked to this person later, said, yeah, we just I just put it I was over at their he was over at our house one time. He knew we were already having some financial issues, and so he put it on our bed, not knowing that when I get to bed, first thing I do is I just throw the covers up like this, and it launched the envelope up against the wall, and it fell down behind our bed, and I never knew. And so here's the picture I have of this. For over a year, as I'm laying down, and I have anxiety, and I'm just thinking, how are we gonna do this? How are we gonna do this?
Joel Brooks:God had already answered the prayer. I'm literally sleeping over it. The disciples have no idea. They're just in a it's not like their life was threatened or anything like that. It's just it was just so hard, but they had no idea that help was already on the way.
Joel Brooks:Everything was going according to Jesus' plan. Keep this in mind, like, if you're if you're struggling, Jesus has already got things in motion, and he's coming to you. When the disciples see Jesus coming to them, they think it's a ghost. They they're terrified. I mean, it is a reads like, you know, a ghost story.
Joel Brooks:It's a dark and stormy night. And, what's more believable? Somebody walking on the water to you, or you're seeing a ghost? I'd say ghost every time. Jesus, he tells them, take heart, it is I.
Joel Brooks:Do not be afraid. Jesus isn't just saying here, hey, guys. It's me. Those words, it is I. In Greek, it's this familiar ego emi, which is the name Yahweh.
Joel Brooks:He's saying, I am. He's revealing himself as I am. You don't have to be scared. So, the Lord is revealing himself to them. And, while everybody else is just kind of frozen with fear, they can't speak, good old Peter is why we love him.
Joel Brooks:He's going to say something. Peter steps up and he responds to Jesus' declaration of I am. He says, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. That is a remarkable request. It's not just bold.
Joel Brooks:It it shows incredible insight. It's a request that takes Jesus' identity seriously. And, notice what Peter does not ask for. He does not ask if he can come to Jesus. He doesn't say, Jesus, cannot come to you.
Joel Brooks:He doesn't ask that. He says, Jesus, if it's you, command me to come. Command me. By this point, Peter has heard Jesus command demons, and they have fled. He has heard him command diseases to leave, and they have left.
Joel Brooks:He command lame people to leap. He has heard Jesus command storms to cease, and they have ceased. And so, Peter knows that whatever Jesus commands happens. With his command, he gives the power to obey that command. Saint Augustine will put it this way.
Joel Brooks:He would say, Lord, command what you will, but give what you command. Command what you will, but give what you command. Peter is saying, Lord, command what you will. If you command me to come, give me the power to come. It's a very insightful prayer.
Joel Brooks:We could take away from this that whatever Jesus is commanding us to do, know that with it, he is giving us the power to obey that command. Another thing I want you to notice that Peter does not say. He does not say, command me to walk on water. No. He says, command me to come to you.
Joel Brooks:In other words, Peter's not asking if he could have some cool, miraculous experience. He he just wants to be with Jesus. If walking on water is how he gets to be with Jesus, then fine. But his end goal, what he wants, is just to be with him. When I was in college, I was part of a very charismatic college ministry.
Joel Brooks:By that, I mean, most of my friends spoke in tongues. I'm actually very comfortable in that kind of environment, that kind of charismatic environment. Wouldn't mind a little more of it here. I'll settle on just some amens and a few more hand raises. There you go.
Joel Brooks:Thank you. Thank you. It's a start. It was it was strange at the time for me, because I grew up Baptist, and, we didn't do that kind of thing. Know, there was no drinking, there was no dancing, there was no speaking in tongues.
Joel Brooks:You probably didn't drink because it would lead to dancing and speaking in tongues. But my friends were given this gift, and I really wanted it. I, however, was just given the gift of teaching, which I thought was a much lesser gift. And so, I I kept praying and praying and praying, Lord, would you give me this gift of tongues? Would you give me this gift of tongues?
Joel Brooks:And, the Lord and his kindness never gave me that gift yet. He likely didn't give it to me because if I were to be honest, it pains me to say this, but if I were to be honest, I was after the experience more than I was after him. So I just I just wanted. Could I just experience something like that? Something in my life that I can't explain, that like, you know, it's it's absolute proof that God's at work.
Joel Brooks:Teaching is not absolute proof, but that, oh, yes. Would you give me that experience? And, I long for the experience more than I longed for him. Of course, I would always pray as Lord, so I could, you know, know you more, but but but deep down, I I really think that's what I was after. Not Peter.
Joel Brooks:Peter wants to be with Jesus. We learn from him as a follower of Jesus, we learn how we should pray. Here's what we should be praying. Lord, command me to come to you. And, I will come to you however.
Joel Brooks:However we come is irrelevant. But, what I wanna hear is like, will you command me to come to you? The Lord responds to Peter's request with one simple word. Come. And so, Peter, he drops his oar, he gets out of the boat, and he walks on the water to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Once again, we're not really giving details as to what that looks like, but we do see that just here for a brief moment, the impossible becomes possible. Hear me. If you are a follower of Jesus and you take Jesus seriously for who he says he is, that you truly believe that Jesus is Lord and that you are ready to obey him, to know that he very well might call you to do something that seems impossible. He very well might call you to confess that sin that you have kept hidden for over twenty years, terrified that anyone would find out. He might call you to have that conversation with someone you have said, I'm never gonna have.
Joel Brooks:You've always liked the courage to have. He might be calling you to give so much of your time or to give so much of your money, you were saying, that's an impossible amount for me to give that much. He might be calling some of you to love someone who is completely unlovable, to forgive someone who is unforgivable. Some of you might be in a marriage that is dead, deader than dead, and he might be calling you to believe in the resurrection. And church, if we believe the things that we have just sung, if we believe the things that we have just read in our opening scriptures, if we believe these things and take Jesus seriously at his word and ask him to command us, then he very well might ask us to get out of the safety of our boat and to do something impossible.
Joel Brooks:I can't help but think this. He very well might be calling us to go and buy an old abandoned hospital and to transform it for this city. Now, we don't know how far Peter walked. We don't know if it was a couple of steps or a couple 100. We only know that he was given the power to do this.
Joel Brooks:However, somewhere along the way, he took his eyes off Jesus. He began to look at his surroundings. He noticed the wind. He probably noticed the fact that, oh my gosh, I'm walking on water. He began to get scared, and he began to sink.
Joel Brooks:He became afraid when his focus wasn't on Jesus. Here, we're given such a simple simple, yet very hard lesson. And it's this, keep your eyes on Jesus. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Any of you ever been driving someplace?
Joel Brooks:You're driving there, and yet your mind is very occupied with one thought. You just keep kinda chewing it over in your mind, and then all of a sudden, you find yourself at that destination with no idea how you got there, no idea how many red lights you ran, how fast you were going, No idea if you were just, like, supernaturally avoiding wrecks? You have no idea. It's it's very similar to what's happening here is Jesus has so occupied our mind, our vision is so set on him, you're unaware of how you're getting there. It doesn't matter if you're walking on water or you're just spending five minutes in the word, you don't know because your focus is on Jesus, and you keep your eyes on him.
Joel Brooks:When Peter begins to sink, he prays the shortest prayer in the Bible. Lord, save me. Shortest prayer, and it's enough. Anything more, he'd have been a goner. Every time I I read this, I go back to junior high and the youth pastor, and he says, you know, if if Peter had prayed, oh, sovereign Lord, maker of heaven and earth, would you just It was bad then, still stuck in my head, and now it's forever stuck in yours.
Joel Brooks:Yeah. He's not praying the Lord's prayer here. He's forgetting about missionaries. I mean, he's getting to the heart of it. Lord, save me.
Joel Brooks:Save me. And, it's enough. We're actually given two great prayers from Peter, and they're both short. But, there are two prayers that should always be on the Christian's lips. Lord, command me.
Joel Brooks:Lord, save me. Your life as a follower of Jesus will be transformed if those are the two prayers on your lips this week. Lord, command me. Lord, save me. And, the Lord does save him.
Joel Brooks:We read in verse 31. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, oh, you of little faith. Why did you doubt? So Jesus saved Peter and then rebuked him. The order is important.
Joel Brooks:He saved him first, and then he rebuked him for his lack of faith. Been chewing on this for a while. So Peter here gets rebuked, while those in the boat didn't. What's the lesson in that? Is the lesson that we're just supposed to stay in the boat?
Joel Brooks:If we don't want get a rebuke, stay in the boat. I mean, it is true that those who were in the boat did not get rebuked. It is also true that no one in the boat failed. Their faith did not fail. It's also true that no one in the boat sank.
Joel Brooks:But, it is also true that no one in the boat got to experience the power of God and be saved by Jesus. If you want to experience the power of God, then you must take a step of faith. You gotta step out of what feels so safe and what feels comfortable, and you've gotta do what I would call just some kind of risky obedience. It's always gonna be a step of faith. Remember, we learned that last week.
Joel Brooks:Faith comes before understanding. We have to take out that that that one step. This means that the Christian life is never going to be boring for us if we believe this is the life God is calling us to, because he's calling us out of the safety of our boat and to take a step. There'll be certain death unless he saves us. Here's the deal.
Joel Brooks:Because we are deeply flawed individuals, we are full of sin, we are full of doubt, When we take these steps of faith, know we will fail, and Jesus will save us. It's not a question of whether or not we're gonna fail or not. We're going to fail as we're walking in these steps of faith to Jesus. Taking these steps will fail, and Jesus will save us. It's the point of this.
Joel Brooks:Even when we have just little faith, he saves us. After this story here, Jesus and his disciples, they they they get to the shore. Jesus no longer has to walk on water. When the boat's there, he'll take the boat. When they get to shore, I'm gonna look at this next week.
Joel Brooks:He preaches a sermon. It's in John six. What happens is that entire group of people that he fed the fed with the loaves and the fishes, the 5,000, which was really like the 20,000, they actually run all the way on the other side of the lake, and they meet Jesus on the other side. That's how bad the storm was. The people on foot beat them.
Joel Brooks:But when he gets there, he's like, oh, great. They're here. Okay. And so, he preaches another sermon to them. These aren't real followers though.
Joel Brooks:These are people who just want another meal. That sermon, when you read that sermon and you keep in mind what Jesus had just done with Peter, man, it opens it up for you. Everyone else might have missed some of the things that Jesus was saying, but there were certain things that hit directly at Peter. And, I wonder if Jesus was even looking at Peter as he said these things. And, one of the things that Jesus said was, no one can come to me.
Joel Brooks:No one can come unless the Father draws him. And, I will raise him up on the last day. Hear me, Peter? And, he also says this. He says, this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing.
Joel Brooks:Of all that he has given me, I will raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father. And, he's looking at Peter. This is the will of my Father. For everyone who looks at me, I give eternal life to.
Joel Brooks:And, I will raise up on the last day. Peter just got to experience that in this new profound way. The sad thing is most Christians, we're banking on experiencing that only at the end of our life. We're like, yeah yeah yeah, I Jesus could do all those things. Not that I'm gonna act out on faith in life, but when I die, that's when my faith kicks in, people.
Joel Brooks:And, I believe, yeah, that's when Jesus is gonna raise me. Jesus says, I'm I'm the Lord now. I'm asking you to put your faith in me now, to take those steps of faith now. So, come to me as my father is drawing you to me. Look at me, and you'll receive life.
Joel Brooks:And, you know what? When you fall, I will raise you up. I will do that now, and trust me, I will do that at your last breath. So, we get to experience now what we will experience in full someday. That day when we die, we're in the grave and Jesus pulls us out.
Joel Brooks:And, he could do that for us because he actually walks later a much more difficult path than walking on water. Jesus will walk to the cross. Far more challenging, far more faith and obedience demanded of him. And, he will walk to the cross and he will be buried and he will come out the other side. And, because of that, we could truly place our trust in him.
Joel Brooks:Let's pray to him, church. Jesus, thank you for revealing yourself as Yahweh, as the Lord. And, I sense right now, there's a struggle within us to take you seriously as the Lord, for who you have revealed yourself to be. Lord, I pray that even we who have just a little faith in that would act on it. Lord, I pray the two prayers that would be on our lips this week would be, Lord, command me to come, command me, and Lord, save me.
Joel Brooks:Lord, we want to follow you all the way to the end. Give us the strength to do so. And we pray this in the sweet name of Jesus, our savior. Amen.