August 9, 2026 | Keep Your Eyes on Jesus

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

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 upon 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.

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, 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.

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 beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me.

Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, O 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, the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be always acceptable in your sight.

Amen.

I would like this morning to take a quick look at Jonah.

It deserves a sermon all on its own, but we there isn't time for two sermons this morning.

And Jonah, that passage is on page 774 of your Pew Bible, if you want to grab it and take a quick look.

And then we'll go on to Matthew's gospel, where also water is involved in both cases.

A little bit of catastrophe is involved in both cases, but things work out in both cases.

Nineveh was an important city in the ancient world, and it had been for thousands of years.

Ancient Nineveh sits on the bank of the Tigris River just across from the modern city of Mosul.

You may remember Mosul from a few years back when ISIS was doing a lot of damage and warfare in the area, and they had to be defeated, and they kind of left Mosul heavily damaged.

But it's kind of like Metro Nineveh, if you want to think of it that way.

And the Nineveh was founded about 5,000 to 6,000 years BC.

Goes way back to an early farming community.

But by about the year 700 BC, it had become one of the major capital cities of that Middle East, a major point of the Assyrian Empire.

Asher Banipal, Senatcharib, two kings that were based there and were very important in history.

The time period that Jonah was prophesying was 782 to 753 BC.

So that was that was early enough that Nineveh was really kind of at its peak.

It was kind of the New York City of its era.

And it happens, and this is why I wanted to touch on Jonah, June 15th, 763 BC, there was a total eclipse over Nineveh.

It's written into their records.

It was a terrifying thing for them.

That may well have prepared the people of Nineveh for Jonah's preaching and call to repentance.

God had showed that he could turn out the lights in midday.

And that usually was a sign of something fearsome to come.

And then here comes Jonah shortly thereafter.

I can't prove that it was exact sequence, but it makes sense that God would do that and then send Jonah.

The Lord God had told Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach repentance or destruction.

They had to choose.

Well, Jonah was from Israel.

He didn't like Nineveh.

And he didn't want them to repent because he wanted God to destroy them.

We had a little prejudice here.

So when God said, go to Nineveh and preach, and if they repent, I will not destroy them, but if they don't, I will.

So we have the great fish episode.

And then finally Jonah decides to obey, and he goes back and he preaches.

And just as he feared, they did repent.

Even the king put on sackcloth and ashes, and they offered worship to the God of Israel, the God that Jonah was bringing to them.

And Jonah was so mad, and he went out and sat under a bush, and then a worm ate the bush, and he got sunburned, I guess, from the process.

And so he was feeling very focused on poor me.

So Jonah took his eyes off of God and was fixated on Jonah and what Jonah wanted.

Just keep that in mind because it will play into the message in Matthew.

But the message that I want you to take away from this Jonah story is if God tells you to do something, you can check it out, check it with Scripture, take it to your priest or pastor, to your prayer group.

But if you know God has told you something, don't run away.

God can run faster, God will find you.

Okay?

If God tells you to do something, take it very seriously.

So that's all I'm gonna say about Jonah.

It needs a whole sermon in itself, but that's for somebody else on another day.

Now let's go to page in your pew Bible to 820 to Matthew 14 and verse 22 and following.

Jesus has been teaching and healing in the Galilee area, not down by Jerusalem, but he's been up in the Galilee area with his disciples, and with crowds they keep finding him and following him around.

Keep in mind that Jesus really wanted and valued time alone for him to pray to his father.

But his disciples were seemingly like Velcro, always sticking with him.

And as soon as they were with him, the crowds found them, and it was it was a ministry occasion again.

It was hard for Jesus to stay anywhere and be able to have private prayer time.

Jesus had been in Nazareth, his hometown, and after he finished some ministry there, then he heard that John the Baptist had been executed in prison.

And that was that was bad news.

That was a heavy message that he received.

And Jesus went down to the coast of the Sea of Galilee, and he took a boat to a desolate spot just to the south, probably of Bethsaida, on the northern part of the Sea of Galilee.

Now the Sea of Galilee and all of Israel really are oriented north-south.

They're longest and not so wide.

And the Sea of Galilee is shaped like a pear.

And it's but a pear upside down.

The wide part is at the top, and the narrow part is toward the bottom.

And it's about the same latitude as where the Savannah River comes into the Atlantic Ocean.

It's just not exactly, but pretty much so if you want to kind of get a feel for where that is on the globe.

The Sea of Galilee is 13 miles long north to south.

It's about eight miles wide at the widest part.

But keep in mind it's in the Jordan Valley.

It is way below sea level.

It is about 700, 720 feet below sea level.

To reference that, Death Valley, California, is only 282 feet below sea level.

This is 720.

And then the Jordan River runs downhill to the Dead Sea, which is 1,444 feet below sea level.

They have two seasons, hot and hotter.

And in the summertime, if you're sitting in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, it would be a lot like being in Miami Beach in early August.

Hot and very humid.

So you have a picture now of the Sea of Galilee.

This is in summertime.

Jesus had just finished feeding the 5,000.

And keep in mind that the 5,000 were men.

There were women and children.

So this stretches your mental capacity to figure out, whoa, that's not just a miracle or a large miracle, that is a huge miracle.

Well, Jesus told his disciples to go by boat after the feeding, told them to go by boat to the other side, and he would catch up with them.

Now, I don't know what they thought.

Were they thinking, well, he'll catch an Uber boat to come with us?

Or how?

I mean, but they did what he told them.

They got in the boat and they headed across the water.

Now, that would have been daylight when they left, but Jesus took care of things and then went up on the mountain to pray and have time with his father.

And it says, about the fourth watch, that would be 3 a.m.

to 6 a.m.

in the morning.

Hours later, the boat was several miles out into the Galilee.

And they were fighting a storm.

And the headwind was coming from the northwest, and they can't sail into the wind.

Tacking into the wind hadn't been invented, I don't think, at that point.

And their sail configuration just wasn't right, and they didn't know about that.

So they were having to row.

And they had been rowing for hours into the wind and not getting much farther ahead.

Now the season is post-harvest at the time this happened, which would be June, July.

They had an early harvest before the very, very dry season of later summer arrived.

And you may remember from reading the scripture that Jesus' disciples had been in a grain field walking across it and they were hungry, and it was Sabbath day.

And so they, well, I did it as a kid in my grandfather's grain field in Oregon.

You just take some of the heads of the wheat and you go like this, and then you can eat them.

They're crunchy and hard, but they're something to snack on.

Well, that's what they were doing walking across the grain field because they were genuinely hungry.

And they were criticized for that because it was the Sabbath.

But that tells us about what season it was.

And the prevailing wind in that June-July time was from the northwest, blowing across the water, and the storm was following that, and it was stopping them.

And they were tired and fatigued.

And all of a sudden, here comes Jesus walking across the sea.

Okay.

If you're walking on the swamp rabbit trail, you can probably walk three miles an hour without any trouble.

Certainly two and a half, but maybe three and a half.

But for people my age, I can model vape for quite a while at three miles an hour on an absolutely level ground.

And so, how I don't know how fast you can walk on the water, though.

I've not done that.

But I'm going to say Jesus was probably walking on the stormy water at least two and a half to three and a half miles an hour, schlepping along through the waves.

And all of a sudden he saw them in the boat and they saw him.

Now, the disciples were not only tired, they were afraid.

The wind was a gale, it was blowing.

And when the wind blows like that, it buffets you a lot, but it also blows water from the waves.

And so there was probably water coming into the boat over the gunnels.

And so as they're there and the little water is puddling in around their feet, they were afraid of the wind and the waves, and now an apparition, something that looked like a person, a form, a ghost appears.

They were crying out in fear.

And Jesus called out to them.

He heard them.

He heard their cries and he called back, take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.

And they recognized the voice, sort of.

Peter wanted to be sure.

Lord, if it is you, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.

Jesus said, Come.

Peter in faith, eyes on Jesus.

I can just see him putting his hands on the gunnel, stepping one foot into the water and it holds, and another foot into the water, and it holds, and he's looking at Jesus, and he stands up and he starts to walk.

He has faith, he's looking at Jesus, eye to eye.

And probably about three-quarters of the way to Jesus.

A gust of wind blows his cape.

And all of a sudden, he takes his eyes and sees the wind and the water being blown.

And his eyes are off Jesus.

And he's sinking fast.

I mean, come on, you know, you jump into the pool, it doesn't take long to go down.

He's sinking fast.

And he cries out, he cries out to Jesus, and Jesus reaches out and takes a hold of him.

Now, in the summer of 1960, um I was in high school in Maryland, and I was 15 at the time, and I was taking driver education during the summer so that when I had my birthday, I could get my driver's license.

And during the driver's license program, uh I was given some advice that I had I still use.

And the advice was if you're driving down the road and somebody's coming towards you and they got their high beams on, don't look at the high beams.

You can flip your beams at them to see if they won't dim them, but don't leave your high beams on to annoy them back.

Why?

Because you tend to drive toward what you eye contact.

And if the high beams are there and you're driving and you think you're going this way and you're looking at the high beams there, you're apt to drive into them.

Same thing, if you put your high beams on back at them, they're apt to drive into you.

So what I learned is what you look at is what you head toward, just instinctively.

So the moral of that is be careful what you look at, because you will go there.

And so as Peter called out to Jesus, Lord, save me, and Jesus reached out, Peter reestablished his contact with Jesus.

As he was sinking, he looks back to Jesus, Lord, help me, save me.

And Jesus' hand reached and grabbed him and pulled him back.

And they got into the boat together, and the wind and the war and the storm ceased.

The point is, keep your eyes on Jesus.

Yes, be aware of the circumstances around you, what's coming down and dangers that might be there.

But keep your eyes on Jesus.

In the midst of whatever catastrophes life visits upon us, it's important to stay centered.

Keep your eyes on Jesus.

So these are the two thoughts that I'd like you to take home today.

First, don't try running from God.

He can outrun you and he will find you.

So if he's trying to get a hold of you, stop and say, Yes, Lord, and let him talk to you.

And second, no matter what your fears are, no matter what your fears are, keep your focus and your eyes on Jesus and stay in touch with the Master, for His words and His presence are always available to you.

I find that during the course of a day, I don't spend a lot of time, in a sense, praying.

I spend a lot of time in conversation with Jesus, talking to him as I would talk with you.

And hearing back from him, often words of correction or admonition, but hearing back from him.

And that is the best way to go through life in a conversation with God Almighty, with either the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit, but especially I'm drawn to Jesus.

And you will find out of that relationship the strength and the courage and the energy you need moment by moment to be victorious in life.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.