Sunday Sermon Manuscript – August 9

Lord, Save Me!

Text: Matthew 14:22–33

Is There Anyone Without Suffering? (Introduction)

1. Recently I have heard the difficult stories of several of our church members. To say someone is going through a hard time is, put another way, to say that they are being tested. As we live our lives we may think, "Is there anyone who has no suffering?" — and yet, when suffering actually comes upon us, it takes hold of the whole of our life.

2. Recently my own mother, too, has been going through a great difficulty. It is not yet over; she has been suffering under it for quite some time. The shop she built up over a lifetime was, in effect, taken from her and she had to let it go, and she is now carrying two lawsuits at the same time. One of them recently came to a conclusion — not a good one — and she is still waiting on the other.

3. As a child watching from far away, I wonder what help I could possibly give — yet how can I just sit still? She has poured out her grievances here and there, posted on message boards, tried every kind of way to voice how unjust and how hard it all is, and yet the outlook does not seem very hopeful, and it weighs on my heart with worry.

4. In cases like this, most people come to feel something like this: "Is it because I have no luck? Why is this happening to me? Everyone else is fine…" And taking one step further: "I have believed in Jesus my whole life, gone faithfully to church, served diligently — so why is it that this happens to me, of all people?"

5. This train of thought is not, in fact, something we experience because of some deficiency in us. It can be seen as a psychological crisis that arises when the Just-World Hypothesis — the belief that "the world will be fair" — is shaken.

6. For us Christians, this is also a question with a long history. The book of Job, through a suffering that is given without reason and unjustly, shakes our basic assumptions and leads us to discover a deeper meaning in suffering. Remembering that today's text lets us understand suffering and testing from yet another direction, let us look at the passage together.

Forced Aboard the Boat

7. Verse 22 begins with the sentence that Jesus "made the disciples get into the boat." The verb translated "made," ἀναγκάζω (anankazō), means to compel, to push by force.

8. Our Korean renders it gently, but the original is a verb that carries a certain force — "as if to shove them." In other words, Jesus commanded the disciples by force and put them into the boat. Having forced the disciples aboard and sent them off to the other side, the text records that Jesus was alone, so that he might pray.

9. Just as a teacher sets the exam paper down on the students' desks — unwanted, unprepared for, the test already begun — the disciples climbed aboard the boat under compulsion. It was not because they had done anything wrong; at Jesus' insistence the disciples simply obeyed and boarded, as though sitting down to take a test.

10. In the text, Jesus forcing the disciples aboard and sending them across does not end with Jesus being able to pray alone in calm and quiet. In verse 24, around the time the disciples' boat had gone far from land, it records that the boat "was being badly battered by the waves," and with this new mood the text draws our attention.

11. Jesus forced the disciples into the boat — and the boat they were in "was being badly battered by the waves!" Here, too, the verb "battered," or "tormented," βασανίζω (basanizō), has as its root βάσανος (basanos), which means the touchstone used to test the purity of gold. So we can understand the very "tormenting" here as already carrying within it the sense of "testing and refining."

12. Seen this way, Jesus is now driving the disciples, by force, into testing and refining. This brings us a new understanding of the tests — or the difficulties and sufferings — that are given to us.

13. It means that the suffering we suddenly encounter one day may in fact be a test given to us by force. Put another way, it also means that the Lord is able to push us, by force, into suffering.

The Salvation They Mistook for a Ghost

14. In verse 25, it records that Jesus "walked on the water" to the very place where he had forced the disciples into testing. It was, it says, the early dawn. Early dawn is a time that appears often in Scripture.

15. Roughly three to six in the morning — Scripture records it as the time when God intervenes. It is the time when the Red Sea was parted; it is the time when Jesus rose to pray. And the dawn of resurrection, when the stone was rolled away from the tomb, was also the early dawn.

16. In verse 26, the disciples mistake this Jesus for a ghost. Salvation was drawing near, and they misread it as a face of terror.

17. There was a pastor named James Hervey, who ministered in eighteenth-century England. Reading this verse, he confessed: "Even the cross that comes from the sovereign hand of the Lord is a blessing in disguise." It means that testing does not come wearing the face of blessing; it comes as fear. And it takes time to recognize it for what it is.

18. In verse 27, the first word Jesus speaks to the terrified disciples is "egō eimi" — "I AM," "It is I." Without attaching any other, secondary meaning, Jesus says to the frightened disciples simply, "It is I." Here "It is I" is used in the absolute form, with no complement. As if to say: the one who will give peace and salvation to you who are now so badly battered by the waves — "It is I."

Being Tested, and Yet Putting God to the Test

19. Hearing "It is I," Peter throws out an unexpected request. In verse 28: "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." And then verse 29 records: "Peter got out of the boat, walked on the water, and went to Jesus."

20. In verse 28, "if it is you" — by attaching a conditional conjunction, the one being tested now looks as though he himself is setting a condition and testing Jesus. In fact, Peter's demand is even more than this: "If it really is you, Lord! then let me walk on the water" looks like a demand that the one who says "It is I" — if he really is Jesus — not only let him pass the test but grant some bonus points on top, letting him walk on the water.

21. Perhaps this is a scene familiar to us as well. "If only this works out, I will devote myself like this." "If you would only let me win this lawsuit…" In the very middle of a test, sentences like these — as though putting God himself to the test — can leap out at any moment.

22. I think the way we face our tests is, for the most part, just like this. If I can only overcome this test, a good day will come; once this suffering passes, surely now I will live in some comfort. I am not the only one in such difficulty — surely others are going through something similar too.

23. And thinking such thoughts, if others really are in similar difficulty, there is in one corner of our hearts a kind of relief that says, "So it wasn't only me." Peter is showing us exactly this side of ourselves, laid bare.

"Lord, Save Me!"

24. But then in verse 30, it records that Peter, "seized by fear, began to sink into the water." His body and mind were entirely swallowed up by fear, and he began to go down into the water. And then it records that Peter cried out, "Lord, save me!"

25. In the moment he was being pulled down into the water, the conditional sentence — "if it is you, Lord!" — vanished from Peter's mouth. What remained was only the desperate cry, "Lord, save me!"

26. Theologians say that the most honest sentence in this whole text is "Lord, save me!" And then, in verse 31, follow the words: "Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught hold of him… 'You of little faith, why did you doubt?'"

27. "Why did you doubt?" carries the sense of "you were shaken in two minds, split in two directions." Peter had received all kinds of teaching — the miracle of the five loaves and two fish, the Sermon on the Mount, and more — yet at the decisive moment he seems not to have had the conviction that the Lord truly is the Lord. That his faith in Jesus was shaken means that he had not accurately recognized who Jesus is.

28. Peter's action in today's text has a message it means to deliver to us precisely. What testing, or suffering, gives us is not the message "try harder, do not take your eyes off Jesus, always be zealous in worship and prayer and praise."

29. It is not amid all our conditions and bargaining, nor within the limits of our own experience, that we come to confess "Jesus is Lord!" Rather, only this one sentence — simple, yet true — "Lord, save me!" — is what we need in the life we live.

Testing Is Another of God's Teachings

30. In verse 32 that follows: "When they got into the boat, the wind ceased," and in verse 33 comes the confession: "And those in the boat knelt before him and said, 'Truly you are the Son of God.'" The word used here for "knelt" is the word meaning to worship — to bow down and prostrate oneself.

31. It is the verb used when the magi came to worship the infant Jesus. That the disciples now knelt before Jesus means that these disciples at last came to know who the Jesus who said "It is I" really is.

32. "Truly you are the Son of God" — this confession is repeated once again, word for word, by the centurion beneath the cross. The storm on the sea and the cross are similar sufferings, and at the site of each suffering the same confession follows.

33. The decisive confession that came from the disciples' mouths — what they could not confess even after experiencing the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and the miracle of the five loaves and two fish — they became able to say only after facing a storm in which they nearly died.

34. We can say that the moments which decisively change our lives come not while we are passing through peaceful times, but only after we have passed through unexpected suffering, difficulty, and seasons of testing. In fact, when people were asked when their greatest learning took place, those who answered "when things were peaceful" did not exceed five percent.

We Have Come to Long for One Another Again

35. Through today's text, we have confirmed that testing can be, not a pain that drives us into suffering, but a teacher that leads us to live out a new life. The disciples' confession, "Truly you are the Son of God," is one they met and confessed the Lord within, amid suffering and pain in the face of death.

36. Peter, with a reaction much like ours, tested Jesus with this and that condition — but at the brink of death, his confession "Lord, save me!" led all the disciples into the grace of being able to confess Jesus as the Son of God.

37. It is not the various other complicated things we think we need that matter; the true confession that cries out, "Lord, save me!" must come first.

38. Last week, after a long while, I felt the air of the pandemic again. During the pandemic as I remember it, we struggled by every means to meet and to be together. That is how deeply we came to know how precious meeting and fellowship are.

39. Passing through that deep season of suffering, we came to know the preciousness of one another, and how precious it is to face one another in person. Remembering this, and within the grace of God, I hope that we will take heart all the more and go forward confessing the grace that we are precious and dear to one another.

40. Testing and difficulty lead us into new realization. Today, too, in a reality we face like a test paper dropped onto our desk, we will meet difficulties like these. There is absolutely no avoiding them. But now, remembering who it is that has given us this test paper, enduring, and through still greater grace, may you and I go forward to the confession that "the Lord is the living Son of God!"

41. "Lord, save me!" — this one sentence is enough.