Northside Church - Sydney
Journeying into 2013 Week 2: A Place of Confidence
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Well, my background is in marketing and advertising and I love advertising, I love effective ad campaigns and there was one many years ago that revolved around that little piece, a little tube of Colgate toothpaste because it was said that if you use Colgate toothpaste, you had the Colgate Ring of all the baby boomers got that, got that. All the young ones, where they come from, the Colgate Ring of confidence and it was such an effective advertising campaign that for a long time and even today among, depending which circles you move with, it's part of a vernacular. We say if someone I've got the Ring of confidence, they know where they're going. They're on top of things, they're going places. Confidence in any area of life is a great thing. If you're going to approach a job, if you're going to approach a challenge, if you're going to approach a task or a project with confidence, then that's a very powerful attribute because it means that you've got the skill, the experience, the knowledge, the handle, whatever it is you're about to tackle effectively. In contrast, if you don't have confidence, you're liable to become very apprehensive, very anxious, even you're likely to be gripped by fear. Now in our walk with God, there's a point where confidence intersects with fear. We're not at opposite end of the spectrum in our walk with God. Confidence intersects with fear at a point called faith. That's essentially what faith is all about. You see, faith is having the confidence to believe something is possible, but at the same time having the struggle with the fear that comes from uncertainty. The uncertainty of not knowing exactly how things are going to work out once we relinquish control as Leslie was talking about just a moment ago. And when we're looking for a biblical example of where confidence intersects with fear, you can not go past, there are very few that are more stark, more obvious than the incident read to us just now by Loretta involving Peter walking on the water. He showed great confidence in his eagerness to get out of the boat and start walking toward Jesus. At the same time, he was obviously battling some real fears though in his life, because it wasn't too long before he started to sink, the confidence intersects with fear. Now if you've been around the church for a while, you've had a lot of sermons on this particular incident. You might have been involved in quite a few Bible studies on this particular incident. And the traditional interpretation is, yes, Peter got out of the boat, but he took his eyes off Jesus and his faith took a dive. And instead of walking on water, he started taking on water. And there was a little rebuke there from Jesus as well, if only you had more faith. Peter had to reach out and Jesus just said he was prepared to swallow pride rather than swallow water. It's not one of these better moments, and so that's been sort of the traditional interpretation. Of course, in recent years, there's been a strong emphasis on the fact that he at least he got out of the boat, somebody wrote a book, you know, you won't walk on water unless you get out of the boat. So we've had a slight little twist in the interpretation. I mean, Scripture itself does not give us any particular interpretation. Scripture, the gospel writers, they simply sort of declare what happened, describe what happened, and they leave the interpretation up to us. So it gives us an opportunity to ask a few questions this morning, and I want to take us down a pathway that might be a little bit new for some of us. It was new for me in many ways in my own thinking and praying and reading, reading around and researching this passage. It gives an opportunity to ask a few questions about what was really happening in this moment when confidence intersected with fear, and it led to faith. The first of these questions is this, why did Peter get out of the boat? If you ever ask yourself that question, a lot of people think it's because Jesus asked him to. Jesus challenged him to. It's here in verse 29, "Come," says Jesus. But Jesus only gave the invitation to come because Peter had issued a challenge to him. There it is. If it really is you, order me to come out on the water to you. Now, prior to that, Jesus wasn't asking anybody to do anything. Well, it's all speculation, but the best explanation as to why Peter got out of the boat, and this is one that's embraced by most of the commentators, is because he simply wanted to have fun. He wanted to see what it would be like to walk on the water, look good. And he wanted to be a bit of a hero among his fellow disciples. So, without a lot of prior thought as to the outcome and so on, he steps out and starts walking. I mean, throughout his life, he had a reputation of being somewhat impetuous and impulsive. Right? This is our Peter. And here he is in this instance, with very little thought of the consequences, all the outcome, and he's ready to take a leap over the side into the dark murky waters of Lake Galilee. Now, for instance, this seemingly bold, courageous act has traditionally been contrasted with the stunned bewilderment of the other 11 disciples who stayed in the boat. And they've been sort of really quite severely criticized for their lack of faith, but it raises the question, were the other disciples necessarily lacking in faith and confidence? Is that an assumption we can very easily and directly conclude? Well, let's ever think about this. Are they deserving of the criticism that they've received over the years? Look, maybe not. Maybe not. I'll tell you why. You see, they were following specific instructions, specific guidance given by Jesus. Here it is. In verse 22, "Then Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side of the lake while he sent the people away." This was after the feeling of the 5,000. Now, did he know there was going to be a violent storm that night? Well, weather forecasting was still being developed, but in his omniscience, he's all knowing Jesus would have known there was going to be a storm. And did he intend for them to handle the challenge of riding out the storm without him on board, get to the other side, knowing that he'd be there to meet them? Is that likely to have been part of the challenge? In other words, could it be that this night of storm and tempest was not about impulsive whimsical decisions to leave the boat, but it was more about having the faith and courage to trust Jesus to stay in the boat despite the adverse conditions, but to stay in the boat for the duration of the journey? It's interesting to speculate. Yes, the disciples were frightened by the sight of Jesus on the water. Of course they were. And they were doubtless very apprehensive about the raging storm around them, but their focus was interesting Jesus to be there on the other side when the journey was over. And friends, all of this interpretive speculation leads to another question. Are we meant to get out of the boat? Now, there's a random question for you. Are we meant to get out of the boat? The short answer is this. It depends on what the boat represents. It depends on what the boat represents. And again, with reference to the traditional slide on this particular passage, the boat is meant to represent our lack of faith. It's meant to represent our comfort zone, the things we would rather hold on to instead of stepping out into the unknown. And you know there's validity. There's real validity in that line of thinking. Of course there is. But then we have to explain why Jesus, once he's rescued Peter, gets back into the boat with the disciples for the rest of the journey to the other side, under much calmer conditions. Because as soon as Jesus gets back into the boat, the storm calms down. So what does that boat meant to represent again? It's worthy of some further speculation, would you agree? Are we meant to get out of the boat? Well, if God calls us to, and if that boat, whatever it represents, is keeping us from him, of course we're meant to get out of the boat. In the context of this story though, in the context of this story, for Jesus to tell people to get into the boat and then out of the boat and then for him to get into the boat and then for all of them to continue on to the journey to where they were going in the first place, it just means that we've got to think a little bit harder maybe. Well, it warrants careful consideration. Look friends for Peter, let's, you know, pull this together. Look, the Peter who asked Jesus to invite him to get out of the boat. It was right, okay. And that night, both he and the disciples had a great lesson in the area of when confidence and fear intersect and that a great lesson in the whole area of faith. It was right for him to do that, but to conclude, here's the point, to conclude that confidence in Christ is all about blind, impulsive, irrational steps of faith. That's quite erroneous. And some people think that that's what faith is. Some people think that that's what confidence is, just going crazy, doing crazy stuff and then letting others pick up the pieces financially or in every other way. More often than not, our confidence in Christ is about consistency. It's about persistence. It's about staying the course, staying on board, knowing that we'll get to the other side and that all will be well. That's more often the case. Despite the adverse conditions that we might be experiencing, which brings us to another very interesting moment in Peter's life and one which has to be highlighted as a kind of sequel to that which we're reading about in Matthew chapter 14, this second incident comes in John chapter 21. You see, Peter got out of the boat a second time, but under very, very different circumstances. It's in John 21. It's after our Lord's resurrection. Jesus has appeared to his disciples as a group. He couldn't have that amazing appearance with Peter and John at the tomb. But there's a lot of uncertainty at this particular point. It's getting near the end of the gospels. A lot of uncertainty as to where to from here and in verse 3 of John chapter 21, listen to this, Peter says, "I'm going fishing. It's just getting a little weird." We don't really know what the next thing is. I'm going fishing. In other words, I'm going back to the familiar. I'm going back to the safety of what I know all about. He was going back to his comfort zone, he really was. But something's not right. Maybe being out of the profession for three years as a professional fisherman, well, not this one, it's throwing the less, wasn't it? Yeah. Whatever. They caught nothing. Nothing. They lost the game, lost his touch, and then a stranger appears. And this time the stranger is not on the water, the stranger is on the shore. And he asked the question, here it is, verse 5, "Young men, haven't you caught anything? Not a thing," they answered. And then there's an instruction, verse 6, this stranger, "Throw your net out on the right side of a boat and you'll catch some so they threw the net out and could not pull it back in because they caught so many fish." Now, we're dealing with a very different Peter here at this point, quite a different Peter to the one we encountered in Matthew 14. At this point in his contact with Jesus, he'd been through a lot. That's the first thing. I mean, yes, he'd had some stellar moments of faith and trust, like at the end of the feeling of the 5,000 in the way that John records it, where after Jesus starts talking about the bread of life, people start leaving in their droves, thousands of them, all of them, except the disciples. And in a very sad and poignant moment in the gospel, Jesus turns to the disciples, he says, "Is this it? Is it all over? What about you? Are you also going to leave?" And Peter makes that incredible affirmation, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You only have the words of eternal life." But there'd also been a few sticky moments, like when Jesus had talked to baddies, imminent suffering and trial and death, and Peter said, "Oh, look, Lord, this won't happen to you. Look, it's so negative. You're upsetting the guys. We're in a role here. We're going great." And all this negative is talking, and Jesus had to say, "Get behind me, Satan." Whoa, how would you feel about that? Your thoughts are not the thoughts of God, they're the thoughts of men. You're thwarting my purposes. Get behind me. And then, of course, there was these three-fold denial. And now he's back in his comfort zone, filled it a bit hard, a bit weird. And so, far from being the first to recognize Jesus on this occasion, as he had been in Matthew 14, "Look, it's the Lord, yeah, yeah." This time, it took another believer to point him to Jesus, verse 7, "The disciple whom Jesus loved," that's John, said to Peter, "It's the Lord." So even his spiritual awareness seems to have been dulled a little. But look, guys, here's the thing. At this stage of his journey, Peter's confidence in the Lord, his faith, his trust, his reliance are about to receive a big boost. See, he was ready to – he was now ready for serious restoration and renewal. He was about to have that amazing conversation with Jesus in which he's asked three times, "Do you love me?" And each time he says, "Lord, do you know I love you?" And it kind of gets more intense as he goes along. And his three-fold affirmation is enough to take care of the three-fold denial that had happened just a matter of days or possibly a few weeks before. And here he is now on the road to becoming the primary spokesperson for the Church of Jesus Christ on the day of Pentecost, the launch day of the church. Here he is. Wow, what a turnaround. No reduction in confidence, no reduction in confidence, but just expressed in a different way. This time, not in the impulsive, some might say, immature way like jumping out of a boat, but in a way that was born out of pain, out of disappointment, out of failure, even out of a little bit of disillusionment. And those things are a great school for learning and for honing the faith. See, friends, in the first incident, it was all about Peter. Look at me. On the water. Whew. I'm cool. It was all about him, really. Whereas in the second stepping out of the boat, it was all about his reliance on Jesus. And he's going to Jesus with a very different attitude, a very different attitude. He's been a broken man, and he needs restoration, and he needs healing. And this is the thought. So, you know, this is the thought, beautiful thought captured by Paul in his second letter to the Corinthian church in chapter three, verses four and five. Look at what he says, says this. We have confidence in God through Christ. There's that word. We have confidence in God through Christ. There is nothing in us that allows us to claim that we are capable of doing this work. The capacity we have comes from God. That guys, that's where we are today, beginning of a new year. Jesus wants to lead us into a place of confidence and faith and strength in him. And look, sometimes it'll involve something crazy, like getting out of the side of the boat. And we've had some crazy moments here at Northside over the years, a lot of crazy moments building this complex, which on paper, just defied imagination, defied logic. But you know, for the most part, confidence in Christ is staying in the boat in the belief that he not only will be waiting on the other side, but he's actually traveling in the boat. And we're going to make it, and so it calls for faithfulness and consistency and availability and reliance, all those things. I want to be in a place, I want to be in a place of confidence this year, I want to increase my reliance on him, I want to be sure that he's in the boat with me. I'm ready to get over the side if that's necessary. But I'm also ready to receive his direction and his leading and his assurance that he's traveling with me and will meet every need. Is that what you want to be at this year? As individuals, as a church, I hope it is, it's very unfair, shall we? Well, Father God, we thank you for the absolute certainty that no matter what our circumstances in life, whether we're going well or whether we're really up against it, you are with us. Nothing can ever separate us from your love, and you are the one who sticks closer than a brother, and you will never leave us or forsake us. Some of us here, Lord, are doing it pretty tough today, and confidence has been shaken quite a bit. But that I pray that each and every one of us will get a fresh understanding. The confidence in you is all about responding to your bidding, staying the course, staying close to you. In the belief that that journey will come to a triumphant end when we're done and when we're through and when we're ushered into eternity. In the meanwhile, through the storms, through the trials, through all the problems of life, you will never leave us, you're there. The storms guiding us out of the boat, but more often than not, right there in the boat. And in that situation, that location, there is certainty, there is assurance, there is confidence. Thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm in.