Matthew 14:22-33

This is where I always say we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

So I'm hoping you have your Bible and maybe dusted off one of the uh older ones that you have in your library, or uh, or if you're if you're online and looking at that one as well.

We're gonna turn to Matthew chapter 14, and we're gonna look at verses 22 to 33.

Matthew 14 · chapter mention

I was looking for an appropriate text for today and for the times that we're experiencing right now.

And uh I just remembered um this uh really amazing story uh in the life of Jesus, and it's one of the miracles of Jesus, one of the miracle stories of Jesus found in Matthew's gospel.

Um and I want to remind us that the miracles of Jesus weren't just show business, they weren't just sensationalism, they revealed his compassion.

He actually really cared about the people that he served and that he came to lay his life down for, and the people that he encountered while he was walking the earth, they really mattered to Jesus.

Um this reveals the these miracles served to reveal his compassion, they display his power.

So uh his miracles were many and varied.

As a matter of fact, uh quite different, each and every one of them.

They're they often approached uh every single miracle in a very unique kind of way.

Even when he healed many different blind people, he did it different ways.

Um they display his power, his power over disease, his power over darkness and demons, and even over death itself.

He raised three people from the dead, and he himself got up from the dead.

So these miracles serve to uh display his power and also to affirm his identity.

Anybody that claims to be the Son of God, anybody that claims to be the way, the truth, the life, anyone that claims to how have the power of salvation to be able to offer that as a gift to people, you would expect that person, if they really were telling the truth, uh, they would have some of this kind of stuff going on in their lives.

They would display some kind of power like this.

They would display some kind of love and compassion like this.

And so we read over and over again in the Gospels uh that Jesus indeed does do that.

So let's take a look at the text.

I'm gonna read it if you'll set your eyes on your Bible or your device uh as you uh as you may have uh the text in front of you.

Uh Matthew chapter 14, we'll look at verse 22 uh through 33.

Matthew 14 · chapter mention

This follows on the heels of the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000, which was another amazing miracle.

And we could we could spend uh uh an entire uh uh Sunday on that as well.

Uh it says he he fed 5,000 people, which is a few loaves and fishes.

And uh that's the men, and then plus women and children, so it's really the feeding of the 10,000 or the 12 or 15,000.

But right after that, uh it picks up in chapter 22.

It says, Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, while he sent the crowds away.

And this is interesting because he's about to do some work with the disciples.

He's just done some work with the with the mass crowds, and now he's he's he's getting it down to more of a smaller group, like the small group that you might be meeting with and gathering with to watch this uh this uh online uh church service together, like we do.

And so he sent the crowds away, and after he had sent the crowds away, he went up to the mountain by himself to pray.

And when it was evening, he was there alone.

I like that.

I like it that Jesus occasionally uh carved out time for prayer, and uh, and and that's a reminder to me.

If Jesus need to pray, so do I.

Uh if Jesus needs some alone time, so do I.

I know a lot of you like some alone time.

Uh I like some alone time once in a while, but I'm more the extrovert, and I like I'm always kind of following Kim around and say, What's what are you doing, hon?

What are you sort of sort of bothering her a little bit when I get alone?

I'm kind of looking for somebody.

Um but but uh uh he sent the crowds away and he was there alone up there on the mountain.

And it says here, the boat that the disciples got in, and by the way, he was the one that told them to go out there on the boat.

He compelled them, the language actually would say it that way.

And the boat was already a long distance away from land.

In Mark's gospel, it tells us how far away it was from land, somewhere between three and three and a half miles away from where they had launched the boat.

And if you've been to the Sea of Galilee like I have a few times, you understand it's you know it's it's about 15 miles north to south and about seven or eight miles wide.

Sits about 680 feet below sea level.

Uh sits about 20 miles south of Mount Hermon.

And often Mount Hermon, which is snow capped almost all year long, the cold wind will come down from Mount Hermon and sweep across the Sea of Galilee, snuggled down there in the well that like it is.

And when that cold air hits that warm water, it's given to sudden storms, and you kind of know, I'm giving it away.

You kind of know what's coming up.

Some of you are familiar with this story already.

But the boat was already out there and uh a long distance from the land, and it was battered by the waves, verse 24 says, for the wind was contrary.

And in the fourth watch of the night, let me tell you what time that would probably have been.

The fourth watch, not the first, not the second, not the third, but the fourth watch of the night would have been somewhere between 3 and 6 a.m.

Now, I don't know what happens to you between 3 and 6 a.m., but I get a little goofy-eyed.

I mean, I'm just so watch what happens to these guys, right?

So he comes, uh uh, it's the fourth watch of the night, and he came to them walking on the sea.

When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified.

And they said, I love this, it's a ghost.

And they cried out in fear.

And and I gotta be honest, we're kind of chuckling here, and the little few of us that are gathered here, you may be chuckling a little bit too when you're thinking about this kind of thing.

But I mean, this is just amazing to me.

What would I mean when he came down off the mountain, he was praying, and one of the other gospel records tells us that he actually saw them from the mount where he was praying from.

He could see them as the lightning crackled in the sky and lit up the sky.

He could see that little speck of a dot of those guys in a boat, and they're out there giving it their all.

And this is where they're, this is where they're used to being in charge.

This is where they're used to being in control.

This is where they're used to being able to handle everything.

Isn't that amazing?

And he could see them from where he was praying up on the mountain, reminding us that we are never out of God's sight.

And when he walked down the mountain and he started walking out onto, I don't I don't know how long it would have taken him, but when you start walking on water, which by the way, I have never done myself.

I one of the trips to Israel, I heard there was a place where you could go and spend a little bit of money, and they put this plexiglass thing just under the water, and you could step out on that thing, and people could take pictures of you, and you would look like you were walking on water.

I thought, that's awesome.

What a fun attraction that is, and I'm sure a lot of people take advantage of it.

But Jesus really did this and without plexiglass.

Isn't that amazing?

What was it like if there had been somebody standing on the shore?

Oh, here comes a guy down from the mountain.

Where's he going?

Hey, he must be going for a swim.

Hey, he's not swimming, he's walking.

I mean, what would that have been like?

And then to walk three and a half three and a half miles out as the stormy, you know, the winds are blowing and the and the and the waves are tossing like crazy, and they see him and they say, they get terrified.

It says in verse 26, it's a g-ga-ga-ga ghost, and they cried out in fear.

I I can't look down my nose at him.

I gotta be honest with you.

Last time I checked, nobody does this kind of thing.

Unless you created gravity, unless you own the sea, you know, then maybe you could do that kind of thing.

If you really are the son of God, if you really were present, as John 1 1 tells us, at the point of creation itself, and you set everything in place the way it was supposed to be.

So he comes out, they're crying out in fear, verse 27, and immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, Take courage.

It is I, do not be afraid.

Oh, yeah.

I love this.

I'm gonna come back and pick that apart in just a minute.

But Peter said to him, Lord, if it is you, and by the way, this when he said this, this made me stop again.

I I'm maybe I think a little bit weird, but I was trying to think of like, well, who would you think it would be?

What's what's let's begin running a list of the people that it might be that could walk on water in the middle of a storm, and let's uh okay, that's a pretty short list, okay?

There's nobody else on it except for God.

If it is you, Peter says, command me to come to you on the water.

And that's just so interesting to me that he would even think of that.

I mean, these guys, it's 3 to 6 a.m.

These guys have been pulling at the oars for like nine hours, probably, and gotten nowhere, three miles.

Their backs are about to just collapse.

They'd probably, they've probably been getting cranky with each other.

I mean, I mean, this happens when you take a trip with your family in the car, doesn't it?

And you've you've been there just, are we there yet?

You know, you've been there just a little, you've been in the car a little too long.

Are you sure you're driving?

And then the adults get to doing it too.

Are you sure you went the right way?

Do you think we should stop and ask direction?

I mean, we get like that.

And so here's these 12 disciples in a boat, and they're out there and they've been pulling on the oars, and they're tired and cranky, and they're fearful, the boat's filling up, they think the boat's going down.

And this happens.

You know, this kind of thing.

And Peter, where does he get this?

If it is you, command me to come out on the water to you.

And then Jesus says one word, probably the word that Peter.

I'm just gonna speculate here and guess that he didn't expect this word.

Um, I would have expected something more like, no, it's okay, I'm coming to you, and I'll I'll kind of calm things down when I get there.

But instead, Jesus says, Come.

He bids all of us do that, doesn't he?

Come to him.

Uh whether it's walking on the water or coming to him in prayer, whether it's coming to him to trust him, coming in to coming to him for strength, for courage, for help, to be our refuge and our strength, like we studied last week, um, to be an ever-present help in time of need.

He bids us come.

So, what happened then in verse 29?

I mean, again, you got to see this, okay?

So, so maybe somebody in your household, you know, act this out if you want to, but Peter got out of the boat.

Now, I'd kind of like to slow that down to get a little more detail.

I mean, I'd like to I'd like to see what the other guys, as they as Peter says this to Jesus, launches those words.

If it's really you, bid me come to you.

You know, tell me to come out of the water to you.

And then when Jesus says, come, and I think all the other disciples look at Peter at this moment, and I think that you got something coming to you that you didn't expect.

You know, what are you gonna do?

You know, and and so Peter's kind of in that position right now where, okay, and and look, I I don't want to, I can't read his mind.

I I I'm I'm speculating, but I'm assuming that he put one foot over the side and set it down on the water at one foot at a time.

And I'm thinking he was holding on to the side of the boat like this.

And the guys are all going, whoa, what's he doing?

And the one foot settles on the water.

And he looks over at Jesus, and he pulls the other foot out, and it settles on the water, and he's still holding on to the boat for just a few seconds, and he's looking at Jesus, though, all this time, and then he begins to walk toward Jesus.

That's pretty remarkable.

What are the eleven guys thinking?

They've been just yelling at each other.

Bartholomew, roll on the other side, you know.

Come on, you you guys, let's come on, Jonah, come on, James, let's get it together, you know?

And now they're all completely captured by this thing.

And Peter walked out on the water and he came toward Jesus, and then verse 30 shows us something else, another aspect of this whole thing, and probably we can all relate to this pretty well.

But seeing the wind, Peter became frightened.

And beginning to sink, Peter cried out, Lord, save me.

And uh I love it.

I I I remember hearing, I think it was Phyllis Tickle, it said, most all of our prayers can be reduced down to one of two different words.

Um or thanks.

And I say the second prayer far too infrequently.

Um I need to say it more.

I say the first prayer a lot of times, and so do you, I'm sure.

Help! And that's kind of what Peter's doing right here.

He's he's been distracted from his eyes being fixed on Jesus.

He's he's looking at the wind and the waves now, and he begins to sink.

And as he's beginning to sink, he cries out, Lord, save me.

Verse 31.

Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand and took hold of him.

This is the response of the king of the universe, the son of God, the creator of gravity and earth, the sky and seas, the one who will hold us fast.

He stretched out his hand and he took hold of him.

And he Jesus says to Peter, Oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt?

And he's asking a rhetorical question, as I've pointed out so many times before.

All of Jesus' questions are rhetorical.

He already knows the answer.

He just wants us to think about that.

He wants us to think about how sometimes for a moment we're so overwhelmed by the wind and the waves, or sometimes we're so confident in our boat, or sometimes we're so confident in our collection of people in our boat that we forget that really Jesus is supposed to be the object of our faith and nothing else.

And so it says here after Jesus took hold of him and asked him this question, they got into the boat in verse 32, the wind stopped.

Now, this is uh this is the disciples on the stormy sea, version 2.

Some of you remember version 1, which is uh recounted for us in uh Mark chapter 4, I believe it is toward the end of the chapter.

Mark 4 · chapter mention

And uh in that particular case, Jesus had been preaching all day long, and uh Jesus gets in the boat with them on the shore and tells them to push across, and they're gonna go across to the other side.

And when they get out there in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, up comes a sudden storm.

It wasn't stormy at the beginning, up comes a sudden storm, and they they think the boat's going down, and they they begin paddling harder, doing everything they know.

Again, they're very familiar with this place.

They've been there.

They they know how to control being out on the open sea.

They're fishermen, you know.

And uh the Lord does that to us a lot, doesn't he?

He takes us into places where we're confident, maybe overconfident.

Maybe a little bit too much trusting in ourselves and our own abilities, and he takes us there so that he can remind us of who he is and how much greater he is and how much he holds us fast, how much we can trust in him.

And uh we're told in that first disciples on the stormy sea in Mark chapter 4, that Jesus was actually asleep in the in the boat in the back.

Mark 4 · chapter mention

And they wake him up, Master, Master, don't you care?

We're perishing! And of course he cares.

And he wakes up and he says one word femu.

And it means hush.

And we're told there in uh Matthew, this is in Matthew's gospel as well, that the that the wind and the waves all immediately became still, became quiet.

You you can't get a bowl of water while you're walking across the living room.

When you stop suddenly, it keeps sloshing.

But not in this case, because the creator of water, the creator of gravity, the creator of wind, the one who owns it all, uh told it to be quiet and it did.

And then it says in Matthew, and the disciples became even more afraid, asking the question, who is this that even the wind and waves obey him?

And that's really the point of the whole experience, isn't it?

That we would see Jesus as greater than everything else.

Uh, that when we have a healthy fear of Jesus, when we have a healthy fear of the Lord, we don't need to have an unhealthy fear of anything else.

Well, let's get back to the storm 201 or 102, whatever you want to call it.

He immediately stretched out his hand, he asked them the question, uh, he took hold of Peter, he asked the question, why are you doubting?

They got in the boat, the wind stopped, and those who were in the boat, listen, I love this, verse 33.

Those who were in the boat worshiped him.

And they said this I love this.

You are certainly God's son.

Now, remember what we said the purpose of the miracles were the purpose of the miracles to reveal his compassion, to display his power, and to affirm his identity.

And this this miracle, this nature miracle, where he actually shows his control of nature, things like gravity and water and wind and waves and all of that.

He shows his ability as the creator to do all of that, that confirms to them that he deserves number number one, worship, and number two, it affirms his identity.

He's the Son of God.

And I wonder if sometimes I lose track of that, of who he is in the middle of the storms that I go through.

Well, what do we have here?

We we've got a lot.

Um we we we could learn a lot.

Throughout the Bible, there are all kinds of different storms.

Um, sometimes we categorize them, we'll say there's a there are storms of correction, like in the case of Jonah, you remember that story.

The Lord tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach.

And Jonah goes the exact opposite direction.

Up comes a storm.

Jonah gets thrown overboard, swallowed by the giant fish, and carried up to where he can go to Nineveh.

The Lord wants him in Nineveh.

The Lord's gonna have him in Nineveh.

So that's a storm of correction.

This storm with the disciples in Matthew chapter 14, I think, is more a storm, not a not so much a storm of correction, but a storm of perfection.

Matthew 14 · chapter mention

It's perfecting their faith.

We're told in the book of Hebrews that it's Jesus that we're to fix our eyes upon him.

Why?

Because he's the author and perfecter of our faith.

He's the one that matures us into faith.

And sometimes to do that, he might bring us through a storm of perfection like this.

I would rather he not do that.

I'm just gonna be honest with you.

And maybe you're that way as well.

But in the end, what these guys get is a greater glimpse of who Jesus is.

They start to see that, oh yeah, he really is trustworthy.

Because everything that's working against us, he's more powerful than that.

And how important would that be for us in such a time as the one that we are in?

He says three things to the disciples when they first see him, and I think they could serve as a really great outline, if you want to, for the the few thoughts I want to give us.

And the first one is take courage.

Because, you know, when we follow Jesus, it's an adventure in a lot of ways, and a lot of us have learned this that sometimes following Jesus doesn't it doesn't look like just sort of a Pollyanna, rose-colored glass, you know, um uh, you know, your wallet gets fatter all of a sudden, everything goes the way you want it to, you know, all your acne dries up, and you you have great healthy looking skin, you're smarter, and everybody seems to like you more.

That that's not the way, just following Jesus doesn't necessarily mean that's what's gonna happen.

As a matter of fact, when I look at this, uh uh I see these guys following Jesus, and I think, well, you know, those who follow Jesus, and and you know, they're gonna sometimes encounter stories.

I mean, where were these guys when this storm came up?

They were right where Jesus told them to be.

Right in the center of his will.

He compelled them to go out onto the water, and then he went up on the mountain to pray.

So when we choose the adventurous role or the adventurous life of following Jesus, we're going to sometimes encounter storms.

We'll still have questions about God, just like, is it you really?

We'll ask that same kind of question.

We'll often have need of courage, even today.

You know, some of you wrestling and struggling, some of us wrestling and struggling with all kinds of fears.

New thoughts.

We've never been here before.

New thoughts that cross our mind.

You know, and uh and those things assail us like a howling wind or a tumultuous wave or a tumultuous sea.

We'll always, like these guys, find comfort and assurance in the word and in the presence of Christ.

We're generally going to be enthusiastic, I think, about following Jesus when we when we, especially when we first become believers.

It's like, I'll go in.

And Peter, if anything, is a classic example of overconfident in following Jesus, you know.

I'll go anywhere.

I don't care if they come and take everybody else away, I'll never deny you.

And then he denies Jesus three times.

We know that's coming up in his life.

We've read the rest of the story.

And then Jesus, I love it.

Jesus is three times the exact same number.

Jesus three times after he rises from the dead, three times, he recommissions Peter.

Do you love me, Peter?

Feed my lambs.

Do you love me, Peter?

Feed my sheep.

Do you love me, Peter?

Feed my lambs.

The Lord is aware of our fears.

He's aware of the times we're going to be distracted.

And he knows all of that.

And what does he do right here with Peter?

Does he just go, pfft, you have little faith and walk away?

No.

He turns, he he gets closer to Peter and pulls it, takes hold of him and pulls him up out of this water that he's sinking into.

So even when we're enthusiastic about joining Jesus, sometimes it doesn't go our way.

We still are dependent on Jesus, aren't we?

We'll sometimes be called to do more than what we think is possible.

Yeah, like walking on the water.

I mean, those eleven, the other eleven disciples in the boat, think about what, think about how they thought about this whole experience watching Peter do this, you know?

And think about how long they talked about that and how they told stories.

And it ended up right here in this text because they kept telling the story over and over and over again.

And you wouldn't believe what happened, you know?

And it was just really amazing.

Sometimes we'll be called to do more than we think is possible.

There might be somebody that needs us to rise above our fears, some neighbor that needs our love and care.

And I've been watching, and you've been watching it too, all around Nashville, the way our city, under, I would say, just a huge blanket of common grace, has risen up to help one another in this tornado.

It's amazing.

It's brilliant.

It's praiseworthy.

It's awesome.

It's wonderful.

And following Jesus sometimes means we've got to be called to do more than we think is possible.

Occasionally we'll be distracted.

We'll regularly need to be rescued and restored by Jesus.

And we'll progressively learn, just like these guys did too, more about who Jesus is when we follow him.

And we take the courage that he offers.

And by the way, I love it that Jesus didn't say, gin up your courage.

I love it that Jesus standing out there on the water with a with the wind howling and the waves breaking over top of the boat, and those guys so tired.

Some of them probably thinking it's an apparition, it's a go, it's a ghost, like it says.

Some of them might have even thought, you know, I'm hallucinating.

And you know, if there were ever a time to hallucinate, it would be then.

And yeah, there he is.

And he says, take courage.

Just these three simple things he says, you know?

He doesn't say you drum it up.

He says, take it.

It's as if he's offering it.

And he is, see?

Because the next thing he says validates all of that.

Take courage.

It is I.

He says.

That's beautiful.

Um, in I don't I'm not an expert in the original languages, but I'm told this is the same exact thing that the Lord told Moses in the book of Exodus.

It is Jesus saying, Ego a me.

It is Jesus saying, I am.

Take courage.

I am.

And again, they recognized and they worshiped him later, and they said to surely he is the Son of God, which we'll hear again at the cross from an unlikely source, a Roman soldier.

But we can take courage.

Why?

Because he can offer it.

He is I am.

He's the one that created courage, as well as created the water and gravity and the wind and the materials for a boat.

And if we can trust anything at all, we can trust I am.

Because he can give us courage.

This is the self-disclosure of God to Moses all the way back in the Old Testament, to these disciples right here.

And the Christian faith, I've got to point this out, the Christian faith is not about self-discovery of humans.

It's not about self-actualization on our part.

It's about Him revealing Himself to us.

And the more we realize who He is, the more everything else takes its proper place and its proper perspective in our lives, including storms, including viruses and tornadoes, including fear itself.

Because when we have a healthy fear of Jesus, a healthy fear of the Lord, as it says throughout our Bibles, it's the beginning of wisdom, the beginning of knowledge, it leads to life, so that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil, Proverbs 19, 23 says.

He says, It is I, and it is in his presence that we can find courage.

So he says, Don't be afraid, the most often repeated command in the Bible, as we've said so many times around here.

And I don't know about you, but I never get tired of hearing it.

Why?

Because I keep drifting back into unhealthy fears.

You know?

I keep getting distracted like Peter by the wind and the waves.

The wind of a tornado.

The waves of a virus.

You know?

And here, Jesus says he shows he can control both.

Gravity, wind, it doesn't matter.

Because he is I am.

We can trust in him.

And then that last little thing I wanted to point out, just a couple quotes in a second here, but that last little thing I wanted to point out was that the response of the disciples, it's actually the proper and right response, isn't it?

Look at verse 33 in your Bibles again.

Those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, You are certainly God's son.

So no more no more of this sort of suggesting that the disciples had no knowledge that he was really the son of God or that he claimed to be the son of God.

No more of this thinking that that all happened hundreds of years later and people were trying to prop up the image of their fallen hero, Jesus.

No.

From the get-go, while he was walking the planet, the followers of Jesus recognized his deity.

And they recognized he deserved to be worshipped, and only God deserves to be worshipped.

And if anybody knew that, it was these first-century Jewish guys, they all knew that.

And they recognized that if he can control the wind and the waves, if he can control gravity, if he can come walking out to us, speak to us in the storms, if he can call us to join him in what he's doing in this world, even though it may seem beyond our capacity.

And if he can preserve us by holding us fast, we can trust him.

We can put our hope, our faith, and confidence in him, and the proper response is worship.

That's exactly what the proper response is.

After Calvary, said A.J.

Gossip, God has the right to be trusted, to be believed, that he means what he says, and that his love is dependable.

What about you?

Let me ask you, in the middle of all of the nuttiness of what's going on right now, in the middle of all the chaos, the confusion, can you fix your eyes on Jesus?

Will you be able to turn to him, even if it means falling on your knees, falling on your knees in your living room with your family, crying out to him, save me.

Just like Peter did as he began to sink here.

Would you turn your eyes to him?

He is our only hope in life and in death.

We've sung it before so many times here.

But he's worthy to be trusted, just like gossip says here, in the secret place of the Most High.

He indeed is the one we can trust.

Psalm 91 is so beautiful and so powerful.

It expresses great confidence in God's power and intention to save those who trust in him.

It begins exactly like this, verses 1 and 2 of Psalm 91.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.

Here we find one of the most comforting and reassuring of all the Psalms, filled to overflowing with the promises of God for those who place their hope in God.

If we're going to be able to recover from the tornado and the storms, if we're going to be able to survive through all of these things that are assailing us in this broken world that we live in.

And whether in life or in death, we've got to decide what are we going to hope in?

Or who are we going to hope in?

And I seek to persuade you, and we seek to persuade one another at the village chapel that our hope is in Christ.

Because he's the one that can calm the storms.

He's the one that controls things like nature.

He's the one that, even after this, decides to go to the cross, lay down his life for us, and prove his great love for us, in spite of the fact that we're sinners.

And then add to that, he gets up from the grave.

Something we'll celebrate year after year after year on Resurrection Day that we call Easter.

And that's at the center of the entire Christian faith and at the center of the gospel.

That this one Jesus, who controls nature and all of that, he's worthy of our trust.

He is our only true and great refuge.

John Ortberg has a book called If You Want to Walk on Water, You Gotta Get Out of the Boat.

And I think for some of you that might be what this is: an opportunity on any given point, any given day, any given moment of any given day is an opportunity to get out of the boat and trust Christ.

Because we need to do this over and over and over again.

Ortberg says in his book, you were made for something more than merely avoiding failure.

There's something inside you that wants to walk on water, to leave the comfort of routine existence and abandon yourself to the high adventure of following God.

This morning our alarm went off, and one of the, you know, you can set songs to be your alarm to wake you up.

And for for me and my uh I I like I like lots of loud music.

Most of you know that.

I talk about it all the time, how I enjoy my music loud.

But um I've I've noticed that it uh to set my alarm to do that is sometimes an annoyance to my wife.

And um, and so so I was looking for uh some songs that would not be quite as annoying to her, you know, to wake to kind of wake up to, and I I fell upon uh this one and I've used it for quite a while.

It's uh it's a rendition of uh an old uh uh beautiful old song.

It says, Abide with me, fast falls the even tide, the darkness deepens, Lord, with me, abide.

When other helpers fail and comforts flee, help of the helpless.

Oh, abide with me.

And it goes on and on, and I really encourage you to look up the rest of the lyrics.

I don't really have time to read all of it right now.

And there's a beautiful rendition of it uh on the Indelible Grace uh series of of albums, and we've done that around here as well.

But it's a it's a really wonderful song to wake up to, and it it works evidently for all kinds of people in terms of their musical taste as well, which I'm really happy for.

And it reminds me to focus my uh my gaze, my fix my eyes once again on Jesus, uh something that uh uh we all need to do.

Elizabeth Elliott, I'd like to quote her as well because she's such uh uh a fountain of wisdom for us.

Where does your security lie?

Is God your refuge, your hiding place, your stronghold, your shepherd, your counselor, your friend, your redeemer, your savior, your guide?

If he is, you don't need to search any further for security.

He's trustworthy, he's faithful, he's the Lord of lords, he's the King of Kings, He's compassionate, He's powerful, and He's Jesus, He's the Son of God.

I'd like to close in prayer.

Lord, thank you for your presence here with us in this room and as well with the folks that are watching via the internet and joining us wherever they may be.

And I know, Lord, that you know exactly what's going on in each and every heart of each and every person within the sound of my voice.

Um we turn to you in our time of need.

We thank you that you hear our prayers, that you've even made that possible.

That you didn't just create the world and drop ticket over the back fence of the universe and say, go have a good time, fend for yourself.

That we're never out of your sight, that we're never out of your reach, and that you come to us on the waves, and though the wind is blowing like it does so often and is right now, whatever storms we go through, whatever storms we're about to go through, we will trust in you.

We turn to you.

We bow before you.

And we ask you, Lord, too, that you'll make us ever aware not only of uh our hope and confidence being in you, but also that you've commissioned each and every one of us to look for ways that we can join you in the work you want to do in this world.

And may our lives then become a testimony to your power and the power of the gospel and the hope that we have in Christ, our only hope in life or in death.

And I pray, Lord, that you will uh stir us up to trust and hope in you in such a way that the gospel would fall freely from our lips and be seen and visible in the way that we care for and love for our neighbors in the coming weeks and months.

We pray all of this in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.