Matthew 14

As always, take time to read the chapter.

Faith.  Five letters forming one loaded word.  We say my Faith.  Have some Faith.  George Michael sang "You Gotta Have Faith".  There are many Faiths in the word.  It's a first name i.e. Faith Hill.  I mean we are comfortable with the word "Faith", but do we really have a grasp on what Faith is?

In this chapter Matthew writes about many things including Faith.  I want to take a look at Faith as explained in this chapter.

Jesus performs one of His most famous miracles in this chapter, "The Feeding of the 5,000".  It is one of the few miracles mentioned in all four Gospels.  Jesus is healing the sick among the 5,000 men (maybe 10-15 thousand people).  As it got late the disciples tell Jesus to send the crowd home so the crowd could get food.  Jesus responds to this reasonable statement with a challenge, "You give them something to eat."

Now the disciples couldn't do this and Jesus knew it.  Jesus was challenging their Faith.  After He challenged their Faith He proved why they should have Faith in Him.  God does this with us many times as well, although not always as immediately or as dramatically.  He will not do this every time, but Matthew is showing that Jesus is enough and He makes all the difference.  He deserves our Faith in Him.

Later Jesus sends the disciples in a boat ahead of Him while He prays.  Meanwhile, the disciples are battling a storm on the lake and Jesus comes walking on the water to them.  (This shows that Jesus comes to us in our storms anyway He can, but that's not my point here).  After the shock of seeing a man walking on water Peter asks Jesus if he can walk on the water to Him.

Peter begins to miraculously walk on water.  This is amazing!  But Peter gets distracted by the storm, takes his gaze off Christ and begins to sink.

Don't we do this?  We begin to do amazing things through the Faith in the power of Christ when we become distracted by the waves.  We can't allow ourselves to take our gaze off of Christ.  When we do we will sink.  I mean do we think the waves are more powerful than the One who created them?  That's silly, but it's what we do.  It's what Peter did.

However, do not bash Peter.  Many of us like to bash the Peters (this sounds funny, but role with it) of this world.  "How could they not trust Jesus after He caused them to do miracles?"  "Are they stupid?"  "Don't they have any Faith?"  Don't bash Peters people.  Most of us are like the other eleven disciples.  We are still in the boat!  Sure Peter's Faith wasn't complete, but at least he had some.  I'd rather be 'ye of little Faith' than 'ye of no Faith'.  So get out of the boat!

Faith as described in this chapter is all about: #1 realizing that Jesus deserves our Faith; #2 keeping our eyes on Him when we act on Faith; and #3 taking a leap of Faith.  Faith is not a spectator sport... get off the sidelines and out of the boat!  Do what God is challenging you to do by Faith today.