Matthew Chapter 14 Verse 22

• John tells us why Jesus was so very urgent in getting out of there after the people ate and were filled. The crowd was actually in an uproar of sorts. Folks were astonished. They were saying things like, “This is truly the Prophet who is come into the world.” And they were about to form a possum (Rango quote)…form a posse and come and take Jesus by force and make Him King! But listen, Jesus would have none of that…that would be a mess, why?

• Well for starters, it wasn’t time yet. Jesus is, was and ever will be the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords but in order to purchase mankind back from the wages of sin, in order to fulfill the law for all men, before He assumes rule and reign over the realm of mankind, before the Lion…there is the Lamb. His first coming was to pay for the sins of the world…it is His second coming in which He will judge the world. And so for starters, it simply wasn’t time yet…

• But get this, and I went into this when we studied John Chapter 6 together now these five years ago…Notice how the crowd was coming at this…John tells us that they were “about to come and take Him by force to make Him King…” And what that reveals, totally exposes, is that this crowd did not regard Him as Lord, they did not see Him as Savior, they simply saw their meal ticket! They say what they could get and they sought to place Him over their sinful state as King…And listen, we so often do the same!
• We demand, we seek our will almost even by force in our prayers, yet our reasonable approach to the Lord is to simply come undone in light of His goodness, mercy, grace and love. He is worthy of our heart’s adoration…he has saved us, done what we could not, set us free, and so often we seek to blitz Him into position of King over our own twisted kingdoms…Jesus is the King over His own kingdom, a perfect, holy, righteous and glorious kingdom…and we are invited by Him to enter into His…not the other way around.

• And this is where the purpose driven crowd, the best life now crowd, the word faith crowd, get it wrong.  This idea that God is a cosmic vending machine, that as long as we punch the right numbers, we’ll get what we want…that will fail because deep down making God in the image of man has something really disenginuine/fake about it and ultimately its powerless. Because that is not God…that is politics. That is business. That is making us god over God…And so Jesus says get away from all that nonsense > I will not be king of your finite kingdom but rather you are to be sons and daughters in My Kingdom!

• And so we see in this scene what is still true today…man seeking God for what they can get in terms of this earth and in terms of self and when they go to elevate Jesus, He’s not there…well where is He? He’s still near the Father! Where He has always been! He is still the same as He was yesterday, the day before and the day before all the way back to before men were ever even on the scene…

Matthew Chapter 14 Verse 23

• Please see this! The crowd seeks Him in the feast, the people seek Him in the fleshly provision and yet where is Jesus? He is alone. Set apart by Himself…we must seek Him where He is…not where we want Him to be…and where can He be found? Psalm 40:7, Hebrews 10:7…, “Behold I come, in the volume of the book it is written of Me.” Folks, we seek Jesus through the Word of God, and in accordance with the Word of God…period. Any other reason, motivation, way or work will lead us back to the villages of men while Jesus stays right next to the Father…where we ought to be…
• Take note of these things before we move on…Jesus commanded His disciples into the boat…sent them away (I’m not staying and neither should you because you are the next target of this crowd for them to heap you up as their king…and boy have we not seen that happen today). He told them to go before Him to the other side. A promise is packed in that proclamation…that the other side is a reality that is coming…and when they had set out, Jesus went to a high place by Himself to pray…He had stadium seating in terms of what comes next.

Matthew Chapter 14 Verse 24

• So here they are, in the middle of the Sea of Galilee…four miles out, water that is over 100 feet deep…and they’re going nowhere, in fact they are at the mercy of the storm that has kicked up. The Sea of Galilee is known for its sudden intense storms and as they struggle with it, even the wind to them is a hostile adversary. And man, here unfortunately is where so many folks live their lives…because there is no life in this room that hasn’t been at one point or another, some sort of raging storm…
• Paul wrote to the Ephesian church warning them to no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind out there…controlled by circumstance and subject slave to cultural currents…tossed around by waves of emotions, rowing the whole time and getting nowhere…fact is, this is the fate that natural man faces…but every man has the opportunity to be born of the Spirit…born into the world that this one is just a part of…and that begins with the acceptance of Jesus, the Lord and Savior…

Matthew Chapter 14 Verse 25

• Fourth watch…between 4 and 6am…and I love how Matthew calls it the watch…Jesus had been there on that mountain observing them in this storm, watching them…and you say, “Well why not come to them sooner?” And this question is almost constant because problems are so very constant…why does God seemingly delay His help? Think of this…in this situation, to come to them immediately would have been the real delay. But instead, He waits…
• This struggle has been hours at this point. At hour one, they would still be hoping to make progress on their own, they would still be hoping that the storm by itself would calm…at hour two no doubt fatigue would set in and physical desperation would dawn…by this time, all hope, all plans, all ideas apart from calling out to the Lord had been disappointed…that’s called breaking (that WE DO NOT WANT TO DELAY)…and when Jesus comes to them, although He was there the entire time, watching and waiting, when He comes to them their cry is not…, “Ah, we’re doing ok…or yea we could use some help,” their cry is, “You’re the only hope we have!” See, they thought they were goners…

Matthew Chapter 14 Verses 26 – 33

• Peter was able to do the miraculous as he did two things…as he obeyed the Lord and as he saw the Lord! We put so much emphasis on Peter taking his eyes off of Jesus…but look man, there are folks that see nothing in the room but what they’re looking at…they hear nothing but what they are attuned to…and then there are others…that see almost everything and have awareness of everything being said and done around them…this is truth man…and Peter was a leader…looked to by all the men and women around him…So I don’t want to say he took his eyes off of Jesus…that’s not what I read here…
• What I read here is that he saw the storm and in that split moment, he no longer saw Jesus. This is a trick man, one that is so powerful and so prevalent but so missed by so many…to not see the problem first…but to see Jesus. In your day, in your circumstance, in your discussion, in your crisis, in your storm…this is what the Word of God will train your brain to do, instruct your eyes by opening them…that Jesus is all over everywhere! Peter lost that…he saw the storm for a moment…and the implication is that he stopped walking…obedience faltered…and yet, one call to the Lord and immediately Jesus stretched…He caught him…I love that!!

Matthew Chapter 34 – 36

• Have you yet recognized Jesus? He is God among us…He is the one and only Savior able and powerful and willing to forgive you of all of your sin and bring you to an acceptable state to the Kingdom of Heaven. Well, have you started to heal yet? They brought their sick to Jesus after He was recognized…see that? They touched God in that healing…are you healing yet? Perhaps today is a good day to break…come to the end of yourself and call out to Jesus…You’ve all been invited into His kingdom…would you today accept that invitation?