THIS incident which we are going to consider next has many features in common with that in our last study in the eighth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke, the main point being that this incident, exactly like the other, concentrates attention on the nature and the character of faith and the importance of our having a right view of it. But, of course, it does so in a slightly different manner. There, the major trouble we saw to be the failure to realize that faith is an activity, something that must be applied. ‘Where is your faith?’ The disciples had it, but they were not focusing it upon their particular problem. Here, as we shall see, while in general we are still considering the question of the true character of faith, it is from a somewhat different aspect.
However, we cannot come to our main consideration, important as it is, without noticing one preliminary matter which is absolutely vital and essential. Again as in the incident of the storm at sea, the first thing we notice here is the Person, the personality if you like, of our Blessed Lord. Here, once more, He stands out in all the fulness of His Godhead and of His unique deity. We see Him, Himself, walking upon the waves, though they were stormy and turbulent, and we see Him likewise enabling His servant, the apostle, to do the same. We again see Him commanding and controlling the elements. We are bound to start with this, because we cannot begin to consider the question of faith nor can we have a true understanding of faith if we are not clear about Him. We are not talking about any sort of faith, we are talking about the Christian faith, and the essential preliminary to any consideration of that is to be clear about the Person of our Blessed Lord. There is no Christian message apart from that which starts by saying that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God, that He is the Lord of Glory, the Lord Jesus Christ; and here you see Him standing out in this effulgence of His glory, the Master of the Universe, the Lord of the elements. He manifests it, He demonstrates it. We start with that because the whole purpose of these Gospels is to portray Him. It is also absolutely vital in any consideration of our subject to demonstrate that it is a failure in some shape or form to realize what He is that accounts for all our troubles.
However, it is equally clear that the special object of recording this incident is to call attention to this thing which happened to Peter. We see our Lord everywhere in the Gospels in His glory and in His deity, but each separate incident brings out something peculiar, something special of its own; and clearly the special thing here is the incident as it affects particularly the Apostle Peter.
Peter starts off so well, so magnificently. Then he gets into trouble and ends up so badly. Now that is the picture—Peter, who at first seems to be full of faith, ends up by being a miserable failure, crying out in desperation. How quickly it all happened! We are told of this particular sea that one of its chief characteristics is that storms come down upon it suddenly. It may be calm at one moment and the next moment there is a raging storm. That happened to the sea on this occasion, and it also happened to Peter—that sudden change in the whole position.
Now as I understand this incident, the vital thing is to observe closely what happened, and the point that must be emphasized is this, that the big difference between the miracle of stilling the storm and this present incident, is that there, the storm came in as a fresh factor to upset the disciples—there our Lord fell asleep and then the storm came—but here in this incident, as it concerns Peter, that is not the case at all. There is nothing new, there is nothing fresh. The storm had already started and was raging before our Lord came anywhere near the disciples or near the boat. The ship, we are told, was in the midst of the sea, tossed with the waves, and our Lord was praying, alone on the mountainside. That is the point we must stress—that here the disciples are in the boat without our Lord and the storm is raging, then He suddenly appears and this incident takes place. The thing to remember is that Peter had no new factor to contend with after he stepped out of the boat. It was not that he stepped out on to smooth water and that then the storm came; the storm was there before the Lord appeared near the boat at all. That is a very important point as I understand it. There was no new factor as there was on the other occasion, and yet Peter got into trouble and became unhappy and frightened and desperate. The question is: Why? And the answer is that the trouble was entirely in Peter. Our Lord gives us a precise diagnosis—it was little faith. ‘O thou of little faith wherefore didst thou doubt?’ It is little faith leading to the entry of doubt. Here, then, it seems to me there are a number of important lessons which we can learn, and, if we but learn them, and grasp them, they will save us from many an attack of spiritual depression.
First and foremost I must call attention to what I am constrained to describe as the Peter mentality, or if you prefer it, the Peter temperament. Many times we have had to emphasize the fact that when we are converted and saved and become Christian our temperaments do not change; they remain exactly what they were. You do not become somebody else, you are still yourself. We may all say: ‘I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’, and while we go on to add, ‘and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God’, yet that ‘I’ is always the same. You are always yourself, and, though you become Christian, you are still yourself. You have your own peculiar temperament, your own peculiar characteristics, and the result is that we all have our special problems. There are certain problems that are fundamental and common to us all, and even our particular problem comes under the general category of sin and the results of the Fall, but it comes to us in different ways, in several ways. We are all familiar with this fact. All members of the Church are not the same, all members of any group, however small, are not the same; we all have certain things about which we have to be particularly and exceptionally careful. Other people are not troubled by these things at all. Ah, yes, but they have other things about which they have to be careful. The hot-tempered person has to watch that temper very closely, and equally the phlegmatic and lethargic person has to be careful, because he is so flabby in his whole mentality that he tends not to stand when he should stand. In other words, we all have our particular difficulties and they generally arise from our own peculiar temperament which God has given us. I can indeed go further in this context and say that probably the thing we have to watch most of all is our strength, our strong point. We all tend to fail ultimately at our strongest point.
Now I believe that was very true of Peter. Peter’s great characteristic was his energy, his capacity for quick decision, his active personality. He was enthusiastic and impulsive, and that was the hing that was constantly leading him into trouble. It is a very good thing to have an energetic nature. Some of the greatest men the world has ever known, if I understand them rightly as I read their biographies, are to be explained mainly by their energy, not by their intellectual capacity, not by their wisdom, but by their sheer energy. Notice this as you read the lives of many of the so-called great men. Energy is a great quality and the thing that generally comes with it is a capacity for decision. But this was the thing that was constantly bringing Peter into trouble. It often leads to an unsteady Christian life, a Christian life that lacks balance. What a perfect illustration we have of it here. Look at Peter as he recognizes the Lord at the beginning of this incident. There he is in the boat in the midst of a storm. He has sufficient faith to say to our Lord: ‘If it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water’, and out he steps. How magnificent! Yes, but just look at him a few moments later, and there he is crying out in fear. Now that was always characteristic of Peter. When our Lord was talking about His death and how He was going to be forsaken, Peter does not hesitate to say: ‘Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended’; and in no time at all he is denying with oaths and curses that he ever knew Him! Now that is what I call the Peter mentality—unsteady, the kind of person who is either on top of the mountain or down in the deepest depths, either full of enthusiasm and excitement and making us all feel that we are doing nothing at all, or utterly despondent and threatening to go out of the Christian life altogether. You know the type.
What is this due to, what is the cause of this alternation between ecstasy and miserable failure? The answer is that it is due to temperament. The trouble with this kind of person is that he tends to act without thinking; his faith has not been based upon sufficient thought. The difficulty with him is that he does not think things right through, he does not work them right out. Now that was the trouble with Peter. In the Gospels he is always the first man to volunteer. Take for example that incident in the twenty-first chapter of John. The disciples had been out fishing all night and had caught nothing and then our Lord appears on the seashore. At John’s words ‘It is the Lord’, Peter girds his fisher’s coat about him and jumps into the sea to go to Him. He is the first always, always first in everything, and that was his trouble. You have indeed a perfect illustration of it even after Pentecost, in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians. He was still the same impulsive man and Paul had to rebuke him over the fact that he did not work out the question of justification by faith only, as he should have done. He had no excuse, because he was the first man to admit the Gentiles into the Christian Church. You remember the Cornelius incident. As you read the account in the tenth chapter of Acts you will see Peter rising to a magnificent height. It was a tremendous thing for a Jew to bring a Gentile into the Christian Church. But he went back on that at Antioch and when those messengers came down from James, he dissembled, and Paul had to withstand him to the face. What was the matter with Peter? It was the old trouble, he accepted a position without working out all its implications. Now that is invariably the trouble with this type—this energy, this capacity for decision, this impulsiveness tends to make them do things intuitively instead of thinking them right through and understanding and grasping them; and the result is that there are these violent alternations in their spiritual hie; now this is a very common cause of spiritual depression and that is why we are dealing with it.
That brings me to the second point which I want to emphasize, and that is the teaching of this incident concerning doubts: ‘O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?’ This is important teaching—thank God for it. The first thing we learn here is that we ourselves sometimes produce our own doubts. None can dispute but that that was the trouble with Peter at this point. He produced his own doubts by looking at the waves. He led himself into difficulties which need not have arisen. It was not as though our Lord had said to Peter: ‘Peter, be careful! Do you realize what you are doing?’ No, not a word was said by anybody; Peter by looking at the waves himself produced the doubts. Let us be very careful here. We often lead ourselves into depression, we lead ourselves into doubts by dabbling with certain things which should be avoided. I am referring to certain types of literature, or to the folly of venturing into certain arguments which will take us beyond our depth. How important this is. There are people who are foolish enough to enter into an argument about science, though they know little or nothing about it. Instead of refusing to do so because they do not know enough, they have plunged in, and I have known people who have been shaken in their faith through doing so. In other words they should stand on the truth as they know it and not attempt to deal with scientific questions with which they are not competent to deal. We thus sometimes lead ourselves into doubts, and we must always be careful not to do so.
The second thing—and this is a thing for which I thank God—is that doubts are not incompatible with faith. I have many times in my pastoral experience found people who have been made very unhappy because they have not grasped that principle. Some people seem to think that once you become a Christian you should never be assailed by doubts. But that is not so, Peter still had faith. Our Lord said to him: ‘O thou of little faith’. He did not say: ‘Peter, because you have doubts you have no faith at all’. That is what many people ignorantly think and say, and it is very wrong. Though you have faith, you may still be troubled by doubts and there are examples of this not only in Scripture but also in the subsequent history of the Christian Church. Indeed, I would go as far as to say, at the risk of being misunderstood, that if anyone has never been troubled by doubts in his or her Christian life, such a person would do well to examine the foundations again and make certain that they are not enjoying a false peace or resting in what I would call a presumptuous believism. Read the lives of some of the greatest saints that ever trod this earth and you will find they have been assailed by doubts. Our Lord here surely gives the final word on this - doubts are not incompatible with faith. You may have doubts and still have faith, a weak faith.
To put it another way, and this would be my next principle, if doubts again control us, it is an indication of a weak faith. That was what happened to Peter. His faith had not gone, but because it was weak, doubt mastered him and overwhelmed him and he was shaken. If you had asked Peter certain questions at the very moment when he was in that state of terror and alarm, he would have given orthodox answers every time. If you had questioned him as to the Person of the Lord, I am certain he would have given you the right answer, but for the time being these doubts mastered him. His faith was still there, but, according to the teaching of our Lord here, whenever our doubts do master us, it is indicative of the fact that ours is a weak faith. We should never allow this to happen. Doubts will attack us, but that does not mean that we are to allow them to master us. We must never allow that.
How do we avoid it? The antidote is—great faith. It is little faith that allows men to be mastered by doubts, the antidote must, therefore, be a great faith, a big faith. That is the thing that is emphasized here above everything else. What are the characteristics of this great faith? The first is this—it is a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and His power, with a steady trust and confidence in that. Now Peter, as we have already seen, starts off well and that is of the essence of true faith. Here was a man with the other disciples in the boat and with the storm raging round them. The sea and the wind were contrary and the boat was being tossed by the waves, and the position was becoming rather desperate. But suddenly our Lord appeared and when they saw Him they said: ‘Is that a man walking on the water? It is impossible—it must be some kind of a ghost, it is a spirit’. They cried out for fear, and straightway Jesus spoke and said: ‘It is I, be not afraid’. And then we have this magnificent exhibition of the essence of true faith by Peter. Peter answered Him, and said: ‘Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water’. Now that is an indication of true faith for you see what it means; it means that Peter was saying in effect to our Lord: ‘If you really are the Lord, well, then, I know there is nothing impossible to you. Give proof of it by commanding me to step out of this boat in this raging sea and enabling me to walk on it’. He believed in the Lord, in His power, in His person, in His ability. And he did not believe in it merely theoretically. He tried it! We are told here: ‘And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water.’ Now that is the essence of faith—‘Lord, if it be Thou. . . .’ That is what faith says: ‘If it is indeed You, well then I know You can do this: command me to do it’. And he did it. Here again is the great principle that we must always take hold of very firmly. The Christian faith begins and ends with a knowledge of the Lord. It begins with a knowledge of the Lord—not a feeling, not an act of will, but a knowledge of this Blessed Person. There is no value in any feeling unless it is based upon this. Christianity is Christ, and Christian faith means believing certain things about Him and knowing Him, knowing that He is the Lord of Glory come down amongst us, knowing something about the Incarnation and the Virgin Birth, knowing why He came, knowing what He did when He came, knowing something about His atoning work, knowing that He came, as He said Himself, not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, knowing that He says: ‘They that are whole need not a physician but they that are sick’, knowing that ‘His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed’.
I find almost invariably when people come to me in a state of spiritual depression, that they are depressed because they do not know these things as they should. They say: ‘I am such a miserable sinner, you do not know what I have been or what I have done’. Why do they say that to me? They do so because they have never understood what He meant when He said: ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’. The very thing they are saying in self-condemnation is the very thing that gives them the right to come to Him and to be certain that He will receive them. Where there is a failure to learn and believe these things, faith is weak. So strong faith means to know them. I am constantly having to say these things, I am constantly having to write them. I had to write a long letter on this very point to a man I had never seen. The poor man was miserable and held in bondage. Why? Because he did not see that Christ is the Friend of publicans and sinners and that He came to die for such people. He was not clear about the Person, he was not clear about the work of this Blessed Person. His faith was weak and the doubts were there because of that. There are many who go through life miserable and unhappy because they do not truly understand these things. If only they did understand them they would find that their self-condemnation in itself is an earnest of their repentance and the way to their ultimate release.
In other words, the great antidote to spiritual depression is the knowledge of Biblical doctrine, Christian doctrine. Not having the feelings worked up in meetings, but knowing the principles of the faith, knowing and understanding the doctrines. That is the Biblical way, that is Christ’s own way as it is also the way of the apostles. The antidote to depression is to have a knowledge of Him, and you get that in His Word. You must take the trouble to learn it. It is difficult work, but you have to study it and give yourself to it. The tragedy of the hour, it seems to me, is that people are far too dependent for their happiness upon meetings. This has been the trouble for many years in the Christian Church, and that is why so many are miserable. Their knowledge of the Truth is defective. That, you remember, is what our Lord said to certain people who had suddenly believed on Him. He said: ‘If ye continue in My word then are ye My disciples indeed. And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free’ (John 8. 31, 32). Free from doubts or fears, free from depression, free from things that get you down. It is the truth that frees—the truth about Him, in His Person, in His work, in His offices, Christ as He is.
Let us hurry to the second thing. Having started with that first thing as Peter so rightly started with it, do not forget the second as Peter unfortunately did. This is to refuse after-thoughts. ‘Ah, but’, you say, ‘it is a good thing to think again.’ Not with this Christian faith; it is folly. Doubts are very foolish, and it is good for us to see how foolish and ridiculous they are. So the next time we are tempted let us remember this man Peter, who should never have looked at the waves at all. Why not? For this reason, that he had already settled that question before he went out of the boat! Now you see why, earlier on, I emphasized the important detail that the storm was raging before the Lord ever came near the boat. It would have been entirely different if Peter had stepped out on to a calm sea and the storm had then come, Then there would have been some excuse for Peter. But it was not so, for Peter, when he said to our Lord: ‘If it be Thou, bid me come to Thee on the water’, had really dealt with the question of the waves. He had been struggling with them in the boat for some time already. He knew the boat was tossing, and so, when he made that statement to our Lord it means that he said to Him: I don’t care what the sea is doing. He had got above it, he had solved that problem, and so he had gone out of the boat and was walking on the sea. There was nothing new about the waves, there was no new factor. He was not confronted by any sort of new problem. The Lord Jesus Christ was actually enabling him to walk on the turbulent waves. Well, why then look at them? What reason was there for doing so? None at all. It was ridiculous, it was foolish.
That is always the trouble with weak faith, it comes back again to questions which it has already solved and answered. If you have ever believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, you must, in some shape or form, have met with and dealt with the difficulties or you would not have arrived at faith. Well, why go back? It is sheer folly. Not only is it a matter of unbelief, it is a question of conduct and behaviour. Why sit down and face troubles again that you have already met and solved before you stepped out of the boat? I would repeat that this negative aspect of faith is very important. Having believed on Him you must shut the door to certain things and refuse to look at them. If you have dealt with them already, do not go back over them. How often have I had to say that in these studies! How often is our trouble due to the fact that we will go back. Peter should never have looked at those waves. There was no excuse for him, there was nothing new for him to consider. It is of the essence of faith to refuse after-thoughts. Reject them, have nothing to do with them. Say to them, ‘I have already dealt with you!’
That brings me to the next principle. The next characteristic of faith is that it persists steadily in looking to Him and at Him. Let me divide it up in this way by giving you two or three simple principles. Faith says: ‘What He has begun to do He can continue to do. The beginning of the work was a miracle, so if He can initiate a miraculous work He can keep it going; what He has already begun He can continue’. ‘Being confident of this very thing,’ says Paul, ‘that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ’ (Philippians 1. 6). Yes, says Toplady,
‘The work which His goodness began
The arm of His strength will complete’.
That is an unanswerable argument.
Secondly, you and I can never doubt while we look at Him and are clear about Him. Without Him we are utterly hopeless. It does not matter how long you have been in the Christian life, you are dependent upon Him for every step. Without Him we can do nothing. We can only conquer our doubts by looking steadily at Him and by not looking at them. The way to answer them is to look at Him. The more you know Him and His glory the more ridiculous they will become. So keep steadily looking at Him. You cannot live on an initial faith—that is what Peter seems to have been trying to do. He started off with great faith and then instead of going on with faith he tries to live on it. You cannot live on an initial faith. Do not try to live on your conversion. You will be done before you know where you are. You cannot live on one climactic experience, you must keep on looking to Him every day. ‘We walk by faith’ and you live by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You need Him as much on your death-bed as you did on the night you were converted; you need Him all the time. The Bible is full of examples of this. One of the most perfect illustrations is the way the Children of Israel had to collect the manna each day but the sabbath. That is the Lord’s method. He does not give us enough for a month. We need a fresh supply every day, so start your day with Him and keep in touch with Him. That was Peter’s fatal error; he looked away from Him. It is ‘the fight of faith’, you are walking on turbulent waves and the only way to keep walking is to keep looking at Him.
May I say a final word of consolation? It is all in this one incident, and it is that He will never let you sink. Peter cried out in terror and alarm, ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘save me’. And immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand and caught him and said unto him: ‘O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?’ ‘And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased.’ Thank God for this consolation. He will never let you sink, because you belong to Him. You may fail Him, you may feel you are on the point of going down once and for ever, finally. Never—‘no man shall pluck them out of My hands’, ‘For I am persuaded’, says Paul, ‘that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8. 38, 39). Never. When you think you are lost His hand will be there and He will hold you. Just look to Him and say with John Newton:
‘His love in time past
Forbids me to think
He’ll leave me at last
In trouble to sink;
Each sweet Ebenezer
I have in review,
Confirms His good pleasure
To help me quite through’.
Cry out in your desperation. Do not trade on that—but if you are alarmed cry out, and He will hear you and take you up.
But I do not end with that. I must end by saying that in a sense the great lesson of the whole incident is that He can keep us from falling. We will never need to cry out like that if we only keep on looking at Him. Believing in Him we shall never fall but keep straight on. If Peter had looked at Him he would have gone on walking on the sea, he would never have become distressed. He is so great, He is the Lord of the Universe, He can not only walk on the sea Himself, He can enable Peter to walk on the sea. Nothing is impossible to Him. ‘All things are possible with God’, and He is God. So faith looks at Him and says with Charles Wesley:
‘Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees
And looks to that alone,
Laughs at impossibilities
And cries: It shall be done’,
That is faith. ‘Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees (in Him), and looks to that alone’, and to nothing else. It laughs at impossibilities—these boisterous waves—and cries: ‘It shall be done’. ‘Unto Him’, therefore, ‘that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever, Amen’ (Jude 24 and 25).