The Sovereignty of Christ In Our Lives

If you have a Bible—and I hope you do, or that someone around you does so you can look on with them—let me invite you to open with me to Matthew 14. Feel free to use the table of contents if you need help finding it.

While you’re turning there, let me just say what an honor it is to be here at McLean—back at McLean after being here about a year and a half ago. I want to serve you well with the Word this morning, which is a humbling task when I think about the number of needs represented in your lives in this gathering—here, across different campuses, and online. I obviously don’t know most of you, but I’m pretty confident that many of you have come to this worship gathering with deep needs in your life.

Many of you are walking through a variety of challenges—in your marriage, your family, your work. Some of you come to a gathering like this and simply need strength. You feel tired, like you’re at the end of yourself. Others of you need peace. You feel surrounded by constant wrestling with this or that, and you need rest. Some of you need wisdom for decisions you’re making at home or at work. Others of you need comfort. Some of you need healing. Others of you need joy—you just lack joy right now; maybe you haven’t had it for a long time. Others of you need love. Even in a crowd full of people like this, you feel alone.

And here’s the reality: even if you’re not walking through specific challenges or trials in your life right now, trials may be waiting for you right around the corner. I don’t mean to be depressing, but I do mean to be eye-opening. None of us in this gathering knows what the next week holds for our lives, our families, or our work.

So I don’t presume to know all the needs you have, all the trials or challenges you’re facing, or all the trials or challenges you might face this week. I don’t even know that in my own life. But that’s what I love about what we’re about to do in the next few minutes, because there is a God who knows every need represented in this gathering—a God who knows your needs and my needs better than we know them ourselves. He is intimately aware of every single detail in our lives, and he knows everything that is going to happen this week.

And in the next few minutes, we’re going to hear from him. It is an awesome thought that God is about to speak to us. I’ve prayed that God would take these next few minutes and do exactly that—that he would speak to your heart right where you are sitting, right where you need him to speak, and maybe even to needs you don’t yet know you have, but he knows you will, for what is coming around the corner.

What I want to do in the next few minutes is show you a simple story in God’s Word—a story that will likely be familiar to many of you. Not all, but many. I’m praying that even if you’ve heard this story before—even if you’ve heard it many times—God might give you fresh eyes to see and ears to hear, and that he might encourage your heart in a fresh way in light of what you need right now.

Let me set up the story. It takes place right after Jesus feeds more than five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish. We know, based on John’s account, that after that happened, the crowd was ready to crown Jesus king. People like free food. But Jesus knew it was not God the Father’s plan for him to be crowned king at this time and in this way. So he and his disciples needed to get away as quickly as possible.

That’s where we pick up in Matthew 14:22. So follow along with me. This is the Word of God:

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 up on 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.”

There is so much here, and we have only a little time. Here’s what I want to do: I want to show you how this story paints a portrait of Jesus that is breathtaking and heart-comforting for disciples of Jesus in all times—particularly for followers of Jesus walking through difficult times.

This account—Jesus’s disciples in the middle of a windstorm, Jesus walking out to them on the water, Peter getting out of the boat to join Jesus on the water, and then total calm afterward—is intended to show you and me that there is no one like Jesus, and to show us his love for us in the middle of challenges and trials in this world.

So, if you’re walking through a difficult time right now, behold and be comforted by this portrait of Jesus. Or, if you’re not walking through difficulty right now, hide this portrait of Jesus in your heart for the difficult time coming around the corner.

I want to show you five simple, glorious characteristics of Jesus in this text. If you’re taking notes, here’s number one.

1. Jesus is sovereign over you.

Jesus is sovereign over you. If that word sovereign is unfamiliar, it basically means Jesus is in control. For Jesus to be sovereign over you means that Jesus is ultimately in control of you and everything around you.

Look at verse 22: Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side. From the very beginning, Jesus is the one who sends the disciples out onto the sea. That probably happened around 7:00, 8:00, or 9:00 p.m.—after the crowds ate and it got dark.

Then look down at verse 25. The text tells us that Jesus came out to them on the sea “in the fourth watch of the night,” which is anywhere between 3:00 and 6:00 in the morning. So the picture is this: the disciples have been on the boat for at least six hours—maybe nine, ten, or eleven—by themselves, while verse 23 says Jesus is up on the mountainside. During all those hours, the disciples are battling a windstorm with massive waves around them. Verse 24 says they were “beaten by the waves,” for the wind was against them.

It’s interesting: this is not the first time Matthew uses language like this. Hold your place here in Matthew 14 and turn back just a couple chapters to Matthew 8:23. There Matthew tells us about the disciples getting into a boat with Jesus this time, and then verse 24 says, “Behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves”—very similar to what we’re reading in Matthew 14.

If you keep reading Matthew 8, you realize the whole point is to teach the disciples that Jesus has control—he is sovereign over the wind and the waves. Jesus is asleep in the boat. They wake him up. Then verse 26 says Jesus rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. The disciples are stunned, because they realize Jesus has control over the wind and the waves. Jesus is sovereign.

So bring that truth from Matthew 8 into Matthew 14. These disciples were out on a boat for six to eleven hours—why? Because Jesus had sent them out there. And they were being beaten by waves that were ultimately under whose control? Jesus’s. Get the picture: Jesus is sovereign. He is in control of everything in this scene. During all those hours the disciples battled that wind, Jesus had both the disciples and the windstorm in the palm of his hand. Jesus is not surprised by anything in this story. He is not sitting on the mountainside wondering where the disciples are or what is happening to them. No—Jesus is sovereign over everything in this story.

And in this story of Jesus—God in the flesh—we have an illustration of a truth taught all over the Bible: God is sovereign over everything. God is in control, ultimately, over everything.

The Bible teaches us God is sovereign over all nature: the sun rises and sets according to God’s command; the wind blows at the bidding of God. God is sovereign over all nations: God establishes kings and removes kings; he holds the rulers of the earth in the palm of his hand.

Isn’t it good news to know that Kim Jong-un in North Korea is not sovereign over all, and Assad in Syria is not sovereign over all, and Putin in Russia is not sovereign over all? It is good news to know that President Obama was not sovereign over all, and President Trump is not sovereign over all. Our God is sovereign over all of them. He holds them in his hands.

God is sovereign over everything in the world, which means—bring this down into your life and your circumstances—no matter what is going on in your life right now, ultimately God is in control. Do you realize how good that news is?

Brothers and sisters battling cancer today: it is good news to know that cancer is not sovereign over you. Brothers and sisters struggling with special needs in your life or your family: it is good news to know that special needs are not sovereign over you. It is good news to know that diseases, disabilities, and difficulties are not sovereign over you. Your trials at home are not sovereign over you. And praise be to God, your boss at work is not sovereign over you. Jesus is ultimately sovereign over everything.

Know this, particularly when you walk through challenging days: Jesus—God in the flesh—is not caught off guard by what is going on in and around your life. He is not surprised. He is sovereign.

And when everything seems to be spinning out of control, you can know this: Christ is ultimately in control. There is mystery here. I’m not claiming to be able to explain how the mystery of all this works, but I am showing you this in God’s Word because there are temptations, when we walk through difficulties and challenges, to begin to think that God is not sovereign—to begin to believe that God is not in control.

There are entire theologies today—process theism, open theism—that teach God is doing the best he can under the circumstances, but he is not ultimately in control of what happens around us. A thought pattern like that was expressed years ago in Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Kushner had lost his son, and his grief drove him to question his Jewish faith. He came to the point where he believed God could not have prevented his son’s death—that God is not sovereign, that he is not ultimately in control.

But, brother or sister, let me encourage you never to go down that road. First, biblically: Scripture clearly teaches that God is in control. Second, practically: if God is not in control, then who or what is? Where will you find encouragement, comfort, and strength for your soul if you believe God is not in control? I assure you, it will not bring encouragement, comfort, or strength to your soul to think that Satan or anyone else is in control.

And don’t miss it: if God does not ultimately have control over the trials we face, then God does not have ultimate control to bring us through the trials we face. And he does. The Bible makes clear that he does.

This is the promise we cling to in Romans 8:28: “We know that in all things God works together for the good of those who love him and have been called according to his purpose.” In all things. Do you know what the word for “all things” means in the original language of the New Testament? It means all things. God is working all things in our lives together for our good. But how can that be true if God is not in control of all things—if somehow some things are out of his control?

The Bible teaches God is in control. He has sovereign power over all things, and he has a sovereign purpose in all things. Job 42:2 says, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” Because of his sovereign power and his sovereign purpose, we can know God is always working all things—even the hardest things in our lives—together for the good of those who love him.

I think about my family. Heather and I, for years in our marriage, struggled with infertility. It was about five years of month after month after month longing for a child, and God not providing in the way we were longing. Those of you who have been there—maybe you are there—you know the wrestling of faith: “God, I know you have power to give us a child. You’ve given us a desire for a child. So either show your power or take away the desire.” And to walk that struggle every single month.

Near the end of those five years, we started thinking more about the possibility of adoption, which, at that point, I would have told you I thought was kind of second best—since we couldn’t have children biologically, we would explore adoption. But we learned quickly that adoption is just as best. The Lord led us down a journey where we adopted our son from Kazakhstan.

We came back from Kazakhstan. He was about ten months old. About two weeks later, I got home late one night from a meeting at church, and my wife, Heather, was still awake. She was usually in bed at that point, so I could tell something was wrong. She said, “We need to talk.” I said, “Okay.” I sat down. She said, “You’re not going to believe this.” I said, “Tell me what’s going on.” She said, “I’m pregnant.” And I’m thinking, “Well, I know how that happened,” but also, “Five years?” We had been told at every point of the adoption journey not to get our hopes up, because you never know when something is going to fall through—even at the last minute. “Guard your heart. Don’t get your hopes up.”

So after five years of infertility, we decided, “We don’t know if this will go full term, so we’re going to decide tonight not to get our hopes up.” And that’s what we did for the next month. We didn’t get our hopes up. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine months later—hopes still not up.

Then I came home late one night again from a meeting at church, and Heather was awake. She said, “I’m not feeling good.” We went to bed. In the middle of the night she rolled over and said, “Don’t get your hopes up.” That was our line: “My hopes aren’t up.” She said, “But I think—this is probably a false alarm—but we should at least go to the hospital.” I said, “Okay. I’m sure it’s a false alarm too. Let’s get in the car.”

We went to the hospital on this cold December night, and they told us they didn’t have enough room for us. I was like, “Okay, you got a stable outside? Any mangers available?” So they put us in this closet—really, just a closet. They hooked Heather up to a bunch of machines, and we sat there groggy for a couple hours.

Finally, a nurse came in, started checking signs, and said, “We need to get you guys into a room. You’re going to have a baby today.” It was at that moment Heather and I locked eyes and decided it was time to get our hopes up.

They started moving us into a room. Now, a little bit about me: I don’t do well in hospitals. I get queasy—I’m getting queasy right now thinking about the smell of a hospital. My wife knew this. She told me a couple weeks before that she was praying for me and how I was going to do in the birthing process—which was a shot at my pride. What was on her mind and heart was not her health or our child’s health, but my health in the process. So, freshly wounded by that, we get settled in the room and the nurse is talking with Heather.

The nurse starts sharing how the doctor who’s going to deliver the baby that day actually lets the husband help deliver the baby if he wants to. My wife just says, “Ah, like my husband would ever do that.” Shot number two. I decided, “This is my moment.” And it was one of those times when words start coming out of your mouth, and you can’t stop them. You don’t realize what you’re saying.

I just blurted out, “Well, I’ll help deliver the baby.” Heather looks over at me and says, “You will?” I said, “Well, of course. Who wouldn’t want to deliver a baby?” The nurse said, “All right, I’ll get things ready.”

They start talking, and I turn around thinking, “What have I done? I’m sick standing in this room, and now I’m going to deliver a child.” So I decided I needed a game plan. Follow me here: I decided I was going to look at this like it was a mission trip. Stay with me. If you’ve ever been on a mission trip overseas, you do things you don’t normally do. You eat things you don’t normally eat. You drink things you don’t normally drink. When you’re in Rome, you do what the Romans do. So this is another country. You’re in a hospital in this country. You do what doctors do. They deliver babies.

Besides, I have a doctorate—granted, it’s in theology. What does it really matter in the end? It’s all the same. So I’m a doctor. This is what they do in this country: deliver babies. Another country. Mission trip.

Finally, it was time. The doctor rounded the corner, came in the room, strapped a gown, gloves, and a mask on me, got in my face, and for about sixty seconds used a bunch of medical jargon I didn’t understand. He said, “Do you understand?” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “All right—just be ready.”

So I’m standing right behind him, over his shoulder. He said, “Okay, it’s time. Reach down. Put your right hand on top of your left hand.” It was like Peyton Manning. Two nurses are flanking me—“You right here, you right here. Here we go.” And all of a sudden, out pops this little head, and time stands still. This child we had prayed for month after month, year after year—I pull her out and place her on my wife’s lap, with our son from Kazakhstan in the waiting room beside us.

From that point, obviously, we knew we were able to have children biologically. We also knew we wanted to adopt again. So we started another adoption process soon thereafter. It led through a lot of ups and downs to, about three years later, adopting our daughter from China. The Lord did not provide children biologically during those three years. We came back with our daughter from China, and three months later—you’ll never guess what happened—Heather was pregnant with our fourth. Her doctor said, “Oh, if you adopt four, you’ll have eight.” We were like, “Ah.”

I share that story to be clear: I don’t share it because I think all stories end up that way. They don’t. But I do know this, brother or sister in Christ: when you walk through challenges and trials and difficulties in this world, you can be confident of this—Jesus, at all times, is holding both you and those challenges, trials, and difficulties in the palm of his hand. You can trust him. He is in control. Jesus is sovereign over you.

That’s only one point, and we’ve got to get going—but it gets better. It gets so much better.

2. Jesus is interceding for you.

He is interceding for you. Don’t you love this picture? The disciples are being tossed around in the middle of the sea, and while they are in distress out there, Jesus is on a mountainside over here—and what is he doing? He is praying. He is on his knees praying, doubtless at least in part interceding for them, and for the struggle of faith they’re in—not just in that moment, but on a day-by-day basis in their lives.

In this picture we see a truth the Bible clearly teaches: when you face struggles, challenges, and trials, Jesus Christ himself is interceding for you. When the winds of this life are beating against you, brother or sister, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is interceding for you.

This is exactly what Paul says right after he talks about Romans 8:28: “God is working all things together for the good of those who love him and have been called according to his purpose.” Keep going, “those he foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son; those he predestined he also called; those he called he also justified; those he justified he also glorified.” Then Paul says, in light of all that, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” He goes on: “Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?”

Then listen to this: “Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” Paul’s answer is no. “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” And then he says, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

That is Jesus interceding for us in a way that nothing can separate us from his love.

Do you realize this? In the middle of trials, Jesus Christ himself is interceding for you—not just the person beside you, in front of you, or behind you. You, right where you are sitting. When you walk through trials—when you face challenges—when you feel all the needs you have right now in your life: when you need strength, when you need hope, when you need peace, when you need comfort, when you need courage, when you need wisdom, when you need faith (and let’s be honest, on those days when faith is hard to come by), in those moments see this: the sovereign King of heaven is at the right hand of the Father, and he is ready to give you everything you need.

Mark it down: it will change your perspective on trials and challenges in this world when you realize the Son of God is in heaven interceding on your behalf at every moment, ready to give you everything your heart needs. He is doing this for you.

I remember my freshman year in high school going to a basketball camp. I was a runt of a kid, which was not good for my basketball career. I got to basketball camp that summer, and word got around early in the week that it was the custom for the senior guys to initiate the freshman guys.

One day I’m sitting in the dorm room with another buddy of mine—another freshman—and all of a sudden the door busts open. This big senior guy comes in, grabs my buddy off the bed, and takes him out to the bathroom. I’m not sure exactly what happened. All I heard was a lot of yelling, and my buddy came back with very wet hair.

Then the senior guy throws my buddy down on the bed, comes over, picks me up—I’m just this little freshman runt—and he starts to take me out. Right when he turns toward the door, another senior guy comes into our room. When he sees this guy holding me, he says, “Stop. We can’t take him now.”

I had no idea who this guy was, but immediately I loved this man. He said, “Stop. We can’t take him.” The guy holding me says, “Why can’t we take him?” And the guy who came in says, “We can’t take him—that’s Platt’s brother.”

I had me a little secret weapon in the form of an older brother. While I was a runt, my older brother Steve was not so much a runt. Just to give you a picture: he was the heavyweight state wrestling champion in Georgia. Yes—heavyweight state wrestling champion.

I’ll never forget what happened next. The guy holding me hears, “That’s Platt’s brother.” He turns, looks me up and down, and says—these are his exact words—“This is not Platt’s brother. This is Platt’s left leg.” (I don’t think he meant that as a compliment, but I was pretty proud to be Platt’s left leg in that moment.) He put me down on the bed and walked out.

There was another day when I had gotten a jacket my granddad had given me. I loved that jacket. I wore it all the time—even when it was hot outside. One day I wore it to school, took it off at the beginning of the day, set it down, and came back at the end of the day to get it. It was gone. Somebody had stolen it.

My dad came to pick us up from school, and I told him what had happened. He came in and started talking to the principal, and I’m just sitting there. Steve—my older brother—comes over to me and says, “David, I heard your jacket was stolen.” I said, “Yeah,” pretty upset. He said, “Let me see what I can do.”

I watched him walk over to this guy who was kind of the ringleader for this sort of thing at school. He pulled him aside, and I could hear what he said. He told him, “I just want you to know my brother’s jacket was stolen, and if you don’t personally get it back to me by tomorrow, then you and I are going to have a talk.”

The next day, first class, I’m sitting near the edge of the doorway, kind of looking out in the hall, and I see my older brother coming around the corner. And you’ll never guess what he’s holding in his hand: he has my jacket. He comes up, peeks into the classroom, hands it to me, and whispers in my ear, “David, I just want you to know: no matter what happens to you, you can always know your big brother’s got your back.”

That’s a great story about a brother, but hear this—especially if you’re walking through trial and difficulty right now: in a much, much greater, infinitely greater way, when you face trials and challenges in this world, know this—the sovereign King of the universe has got your back. You have nothing to fear. At every moment he is working on your behalf.

Which leads right into this third characteristic of Christ.

3. Jesus is present with you.

The story couldn’t get any better, but it does. Verse 25 says, “In the fourth watch of the night Jesus came to them, walking on the sea.”

This is one of those places where, if the story is familiar, you can cease to be amazed by that line. But that is a pretty amazing line. Jesus came to them—walking on the sea.

Put yourself in the disciples’ shoes. They are scared out of their sandals. Verse 26 says that when they saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. They said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. If we’re honest, we’d do the exact same thing.

But this is what I love about verse 27. Listen to what Jesus says: “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”

Don’t you love the tenderness of his words? “It is I”—language that directly echoes God’s revelation of himself to Moses in Exodus 3, when he reveals himself as “I AM.”

Do you realize what is happening here? Jesus is using this storm to bring the disciples to a greater revelation of himself.

Let me say that again: Jesus is using this storm to bring these disciples to a greater revelation of himself. There is no question that, as a result of this storm, the disciples would know Jesus’s power, his provision, and the wonder of his presence with them in far greater ways than they had ever known before.

So, brothers and sisters in this gathering walking through all kinds of trials: take heart. Christ is with you as you walk through this trial, this challenge. Know this: Jesus is with you in the middle of that storm.

God says to his people over and over again in Scripture, “I will never leave you; I will never forsake you.” “I am with you always.”

So hear this—particularly in those moments when you feel like nobody else understands, or nobody else knows what’s going on in and around you: you are not alone. In Christ, you are never—ever—alone.

And in the middle of those trials and challenges, be assured of this: Jesus wants to reveal himself to you in greater ways than you have ever known. He wants to show you his power, his peace, his comfort, his wisdom, his sufficiency, his strength, and his satisfaction in greater ways than you have ever experienced. He wants you to know his love in greater ways than you have ever known.

Let me give you one more glimpse into my family. I was preaching at a conference in New Mexico and flew home. I was getting things unpacked when I received a call from my younger brother. Immediately, I could hear it in his voice—trembling on the other side. He said, “David, it’s Dad. You need to pray for Dad. I don’t know what’s going on. You need to pray for Dad.”

My younger brother lived at home. A little background: my dad—my best friend growing up—was just the most encouraging person in my life. All my younger brother said was, “David, I don’t know what’s going on. Just pray for Dad. Pray for Dad.” Then he got off the phone.

I immediately hit the floor and started pleading. “God, I don’t know what’s going on, but I pray for your power, your provision, your mercy.” I prayed like that—about an hour—without knowing what was happening.

Then I got another call, this time from my older brother Steve. His voice was trembling on the other side. I answered and said, “What’s going on?” He said, “Dave, Dad is gone.” He had apparently died of a heart attack. They rushed him to the hospital in that hour, but there was nothing they could do.

I share that story because I don’t want, in any way, to communicate the idea that every trial ends the way we want it to. We know it doesn’t. But I also share that story to say this: I will never forget that moment. When Steve told me, I got off the phone and fell back down on the floor—and the Lord God wrapped his arms of love around me in a way I had never experienced before.

In the days to come, those arms of love—and the peace, mercy, grace, strength, and sufficiency of Christ—became known in my life and my family in ways we had never known before. It is in the middle of the storm that the presence of Christ becomes all the more real.

You are never alone. Jesus is present with you.

4. Jesus is strength in you.

That brings us to the fourth characteristic: Jesus is strength in you.

In verse 28, Peter decides he wants in on the action. He says, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” The sense of the language is, “Lord, since it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Peter realizes that if this is indeed Jesus walking on the water, then by Jesus’s power and authority, Peter can do it too.

What a picture of faith—believing that in the middle of the storm, through trust in Jesus, you have strength to do what you could never do on your own.

Now, the key to what I just said is through trust in Jesus. Peter steps out of the boat in verse 29 and everything is going fine until verse 30 says Peter saw the wind—the effects of the wind on the waves around him—and he became afraid, and he started to sink. As he’s sinking, he cries out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reaches out his hand, takes hold of him, and says, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Now, as soon as you hear that, I want to offer a brief pastoral caution about faith. If we’re not careful, we can read this part of the story and hear Jesus’s reference to “little faith,” and we can miss the entire point. We can start to think the key to walking through trials is simply mustering up more faith.

How many times do people say—or at least think—“If I just have enough faith, I’ll be healed,” or “If I have enough faith, this will end”? But that is not the point of the story. That kind of thinking skews faith, because it makes faith dependent on what we can manufacture or muster up on our own.

Here’s what I want you to see: what matters most is never the measure of your faith. Even when Jesus talks about “little faith” here, don’t think of faith as something you try to manufacture. What matters most is never the measure of your faith; what matters most is always the object of your faith.

That’s the point of the text. Why did Jesus call Peter’s faith “little”? Because Peter so quickly took his eyes off Jesus—the object of his faith—and as soon as he did, he started to sink.

So see it—don’t miss this: faith is strong only insofar as the object of your faith is strong. Faith is strong only insofar as the object of your faith is strong.

We know this. Let me give you a practical example, real quick. I remember one weekend I was scheduled to preach Friday night, and I didn’t realize when I scheduled it that it was going to be a conflict. I was scheduled to preach Friday night in north Mississippi, Saturday morning in New Orleans, and Saturday night back in north Mississippi. I thought I could just drive back and forth, but once I saw the schedule, I realized it wasn’t going to work.

So I called the guy in Mississippi and said, “I’m so sorry, but I’m going to have to cancel. I have to be in New Orleans.” He said, “Oh, no problem—I can fly you.” I immediately thought, “Well, that sounds pretty big time—private jet going back and forth.” I said, “Okay, great.”

I preached in north Mississippi Friday night. He said, “Meet me tomorrow morning. I’ll pick you up and take you to the airport”—or at least, I thought he said airport, because that’s not where we went the next morning. It was less an airport and more a field.

We drove up early—like 5:00 a.m.—and there was an old pickup truck there, and a guy asleep inside it. The guy who picked me up went over, knocked on the window, and the guy inside kind of wakes up. He was the pilot. He said, “Oh, you guys ready?” And we were like, “Uh . . .” The guy who picked me up said, “Yeah, he’s ready.” I’m thinking, “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

Then we came around the corner, and this was no private jet. This was more crop duster. I fully expected the dude to start the propeller with his hands.

We climbed into this little plane. Two seats crammed in the front, one little spot in the back. He cranked it up, we started to wheel toward this strip of field we were going to use, and we start moving a little bit—and all of a sudden my door flies open. The pilot said, “Is that your door?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Oh, I forgot to lock it.” He stops the plane, gets out, closes my door, and locks it.

I’m sitting there thinking, “Bro, what if that happened at ten thousand feet?” He gets back in, and we start taking off.

As we’re taking off and going into the air, it hits me: it doesn’t matter how much faith I have in this airplane—the measure of my faith—if the right wing falls off, we’re going down. What matters most is not the measure of your faith; it’s the object of your faith.

Here’s why that matters: as long as our faith is in our circumstances—or focused on anyone or anything apart from Christ—it won’t matter how much faith we have. If our eyes are on anything else, we will fall.

If our faith is dependent on our circumstances, then our faith will bob up and down according to the wind and waves of the world around us. But when our eyes are on Christ—when the all-sovereign, gracious, loving, merciful King of creation is the focus of our faith—we can rest secure. Our faith can be constant, because Christ is constant.

What does the author of Hebrews say in Hebrews 12? “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” Faith realizes when we are weak, he is strong. So faith does not try to be stronger; faith fixes its eyes on the One who is stronger.

When we need peace, we do not try to manufacture peace; in faith we fix our eyes on the Prince of Peace. When we’re walking through difficulty, we do not try to muster up what we need to meet our needs; we fix our eyes, in faith, on the only One able to meet all our needs.

Jesus is strength in you.

5. Jesus is peace around you.

That leads to the last characteristic: Jesus is peace around you.

It is almost a passing note at the end of the story in verse 32, but as soon as Jesus gets in the boat, what does the text say? “… the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’”

We are out of time, but don’t miss this: this is actually the first time in Matthew’s Gospel that the disciples address Jesus this way. They are coming to realize more and more who he is. And in the days to come, they would realize Jesus had not just come to bring peace in a windstorm. Ultimately, Jesus had come to bring peace in a world of sin and suffering.

So, non-Christian friend, I invite you to listen particularly closely at this point. This story is good, but there is a much greater story after it—a day when Jesus would take another amazing walk. This walk would not be to a wooden boat; it would be to a wooden cross.

There Jesus would face head-on the ultimate storm of sin and death. The Bible tells us that at the cross Jesus stood in the gap as our intercessor: you and I on one side, having rebelled against God in our sin (all of us in this gathering have), deserving death. But Jesus came to take that penalty for us—in our place.

At the cross Jesus took the full storm of God’s holy judgment due to sin and death upon himself. And the story keeps getting better: three days later he rose from the dead, showing that he has ultimate sovereignty over death itself, so that everyone in this gathering—and everyone on the planet—who turns from their sin and trusts in Jesus can be reconciled to God and have peace with God forever.

This is the gospel. It is the greatest news in the world. I invite you—I urge you—if you have never trusted in Christ to save you from your sin, to do that today.

And when you do—and for all who have—for every brother or sister in Christ in this gathering, particularly those walking through trials and challenges right now, or those who will face trials and challenges you never could have imagined this next week, this next month, or this next year—see Jesus in this story, and in the middle of the trial hold on to this hope:

There is coming a day when this same Jesus will return. The Bible teaches Jesus is coming back, and when he does, he is ultimately going to still all the storms. There is a day coming when sorrow and struggle and sin will be no more. There is a day coming when cancer and special needs and trials will be no more. There is a day coming when Jesus himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes. He will bring total peace.

And when he does, we will gather around his throne with the hosts of heaven and with every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, and we will worship him as the Son of God.

So take heart, brothers and sisters, amid the wind that beats against you in this world. Know this: Jesus is sovereign over you. Jesus is interceding for you. Jesus is present with you. Jesus is strength in you. And Jesus has power to bring peace around you.