If This, Then That

If this, then that.

If this, then that.

It's the question that drives a lot of basic computer programming.

If the answer to a question is one thing, then it stands to reason that, then that.

So, if apples cost $2 each, and you have a computer program that's basic, and it's working out how to calculate how much things cost, if you want five, then that cost will be $10.

The program might say, if the apple is red, then sort it, then put it there.

If the apple is green, then put it there.

It's often the way computers work as they're programmed.

Well, lock that little thought away for a minute, and come with me to the base of Mount Sinai.

It's Exodus chapter 33, and Moses has already been up the mountain and met with God in the cloud, and he's come down with 10 commandments, only to find that the people have put all their gold together and burned it up, melted it in the fire, and then created an idol, a golden calf.

And apparently, Moses was taking too long to come back down the mountain.

So God judges the people, and then we pick up the story in Exodus 33, 15.

Moses said to God, if your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.

How will anyone know that you are pleased with me, and with your people, unless you go with us?

What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people in the face of the earth?

And the Lord said to Moses, I will do the very thing you have asked, because I'm pleased with you, and I know you by name.

Then Moses said, now show me your glory.

And the Lord said, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.

And I will proclaim my name, the Lord Yahweh in your presence.

I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.

But he said, you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.

Then the Lord said, there is a place near me where you may stand on a rock.

When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by.

Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back, but my face must not be seen.

So today's passage involves Jesus walking on the water, on the sea of Galilee.

And if that's not strange enough, granted it's a little strange, someone walking on the water.

But there's something I think that's even more strange.

Chapter six, verse 47.

Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on the land.

That is Jesus.

He saw the disciples straining at the oars because the wind was against them.

Shortly before dawn, he went out to them walking on the lake.

He was about to pass by them.

But when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost.

They cried out because they all saw him and were terrified.

What is the meaning of he was out for a walk on the water and just passing them by?

Now, you know, I don't think you have to be disrespectful to acknowledge.

This is odd.

You know, it's fair to say, how do we even understand this?

The disciples are in the boat and Jesus is like, hey guys.

Yeah, that's the vibe you pick up.

He's sort of out for a walk on the water passing by.

And if you look up commentaries on it, it's been confusing for a long time.

What does this actually mean?

Well, we need to go back to the Old Testament as is so often the case in the New Testament, certainly in the Gospel of Mark.

Jesus is living out, he is fulfilling all the big ideas about who God is found in the Old Testament, about who God's chosen one would be.

Ideas and motifs are being fulfilled in Jesus.

So what are some of these ideas?

Job 9 verse 8, hopefully, Carlos got the text there.

He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.

That's God.

God walks on the water, Job says.

Isaiah 43, 16.

This is what the Lord says.

He who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters.

God controls the mighty waters.

And the Old Testament.

Habakkuk 3, 15.

You trampled the sea with your horses, churning the great waters.

God marches with horses as a victorious military leader across the waters.

So what do we see from just a few of many?

We could keep going.

God walks on water.

God controls the dark powers, which were believed to dwell beneath the waters.

God passes by Moses with his glory, but Moses could only see God's back.

Maybe what's going on here in the middle of the night was probably the early hours of the morning.

Maybe Jesus is enacting something significant for his disciples to reveal something about who he is.

I wonder, does he say anything that confirms this?

Is there any other hint?

Well, yes.

Right in the middle of today's reading, there is this verbal self-disclosure, which in the NIV is translated, it is I.

They look and they say, oh, he's a ghost.

What is this going?

He says, calm down, take courage, it is I.

But that's not what it says in the Greek.

It says, ego, Amy.

Can you believe that?

He says, take courage, I am.

We know what I am is.

He says, take courage, Yahweh is here.

Take courage, the holy name of God, I am that God the Father gave to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3.

That's the name that he discloses about who he is because God passes by in his glory, hallelujah.

That's what's going on here.

This is an epiphany.

This is a self-disclosure of God himself in Jesus.

God walks on water.

Jesus walks on water.

God passes by to show his glory.

Jesus passes by to show his glory.

God tells Moses that his most holy, intimate name is I Am.

Jesus reveals that he is I Am.

Who does Jesus think he is?

I've mentioned before, I've had conversations in this room with people who say Jesus is not God's son.

Well, that's a moot point.

That's something that you could argue, and I personally would argue, no, the Bible reveals that God is in the son.

Jesus himself thought he was God.

He thought he was the son of God.

You can't really mistake it.

John 8.58 is one of the classic passages in John's Gospel.

Very truly, Jesus answers the group of Pharisees and Jews around him.

Before Abraham was born, he says, I am.

And in case we wonder what they thought he was thinking, they picked up stones to stone him because that was blasphemy.

Jesus thinks that he is God, God the son.

An epiphany is a sudden and great revelation.

It is a self-disclosure of God.

You see it happen throughout the Bible.

God reveals who he is to human beings.

If this, then that.

If Jesus is God the son, then what does that mean?

Well, I'd like to suggest some stuff, some ideas here that are just logical from the text.

If Jesus is God the son, then we should respect his instruction.

If Jesus is God, and he taught, we should respect his instruction.

This is completely reasonable and sensible.

Would you agree?

If this, then that.

If he is God the son, and he's good, I mean, do we have any idea from scripture that his character is upright and good, and you could trust him?

Absolutely.

In fact, people that follow other ways of life, religions all over the world, honour Jesus as one of the great teachers.

He is good, but he claims to be more than good.

He claims to be God.

So in Mark 6.45, we pick up in the text, Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida while he dismissed the crowd.

After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.

Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake and he was alone on land.

He saw the disciples straining at the oars because the wind was against them.

Shortly before dawn, he went out to them walking on the lake.

So this is the picture of Capernaum, which is one of the base operation space that he was working from a lot.

And Bethsaida is to the right and Gennesaret is to the left.

And so he says to go to the town on the top right, but they get blown off course.

And you could argue the question, does Jesus have understanding beyond that of just a human?

I think he does.

My personally, I think he reveals that he knows which fish to catch, that there'll be one drachma coin in it.

And it says in scripture that he knows what was in the heart of man.

He knows who's gonna betray him.

I think he does understand what's happening into the future.

And I think it's fair to presume he's aware that a wind's gonna come up.

Yet he puts his disciples into a situation where they're meant to go to Bethsaida, but the wind is gonna push them somewhere else.

They can't sail there.

They're straining at the oars.

Jesus' instruction was to head to Bethsaida, even though he knew that they would encounter pushback in the form of the wind.

It seems that he doesn't mind in this story that there is effort and struggle involved in obeying his command.

I think that's an obvious low-hanging fruit that most of us could agree with.

Sometimes God leads us down pathways, which involves struggle, which involve a headwind rather than a tailwind, amen.

Some of our guys in some of the groups of Daily Sevens this week doing these devotions have commented, God doesn't seem to mind when we have a little bit of discomfort.

He often leads us down that path, and we might even use the word suffering, suffering, carefully, but we are called to know his voice as his sheep, amen.

He says, my sheep know my voice, and we should respect his instruction.

So a question I think that comes out of this is, am I getting any better at hearing my master's voice as a follower of Jesus, the Great Shepherd?

If he speaks, and certainly in the Bible, he speaks, God speaks, Jesus speaks, we should obey, we should obey.

And this is a challenge for us living today, I think.

I genuinely think it's probably been always a challenge for humanity.

We love our freedom, don't we?

We love our freedom to choose.

In fact, it's like the greatest idea, tolerance of another person's choice.

And you know, I wanna remind us today, God agrees, Jesus agrees, the Holy Spirit agrees, they have given humanity free choice.

Isn't that wonderful?

God has given in His design Adam and Eve free choice.

He designed it that way.

He said, humanity, you get to choose.

And we go, yes, finally, I'm hearing something from the Bible I agree with.

I wanna make the choice.

And God says, yeah, you get to choose.

You just don't get to choose the consequence.

There's a profound truth in that, you know.

We all get to choose, but no one gets to choose the consequence of our choice.

I wanna trust God's revelation about what my choice might mean, don't we?

That's the grace we find in the Bible.

He tells us about the consequence of certain pathways.

I think Jesus, as God the Son, the Great Shepherd, is very concerned with consequences, and he wants us to have the consequence of a good life, like a great life, a life full and abundant, with all the grace and goodness that God designed for us.

And it's on the other side of obedience, but not obedience through just willpower alone.

It's a mystery, this Christian life.

It is an obedience that is accomplished through the power of the Spirit.

That involves the will, but the will's not enough.

The life controlled habitually by the flesh is death, Romans 8 says.

The life controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.

And I think it's so important for us to just remember the power of the Spirit is accessed by grace through Jesus, through the Gospel.

But it's also grace-fuelled habit formation that brings change.

I find it fascinating that Jesus was so attuned to the formation that he had allowed to happen in his life as a human being, a fully human being, that he was so accustomed and habituated and automated to be with his father, that at the end of this enormous day of ministry, he sends his disciples off.

The day is ending.

You go off to Bethsaida, and then he leaves, and it says he dismissed the crowds, and then what does he do because of his habits?

He goes up the mountain to pray.

It's astonishing.

The habit formation that was part of God the Son and his righteousness.

We need to learn how to respect the Lord's instruction and allow it to be something that comes from the inside out.

This is what Jesus teaches in Matthew 5.

He says your righteousness has to be greater than that of the Pharisees.

It can't be bolted on from the outside.

Because he says the Pharisees' righteousness is like a bowl that's clean on the outside but dirty on the inside.

Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, no, no, the good life is when you allow the Spirit of God by grace through the Gospel to change you on the inside and over time through habitual obedience and failure, but keeping on doing things that are in line with the instructions the Lord gives, over time we become the sort of person that acts that way.

It's amazing.

It's a beautiful truth.

Through grace-filled routine, he learned the love of his father.

Jesus learned to remain close to his father.

He learned to recalibrate his thought life.

When I thought about this this week and I thought, how many mega church pastors needed to do what he did right there?

I reckon he's tackling the pride that is rising in him.

Don't you think?

Everywhere he goes, they're coming and touching him and trying to get healed and he's like, I'm not going where the devil tried to take me back in Luke 4.

I'm not going there.

Guys, you go ahead.

I can feel, I know I'm sort of reading into it, but I think he's recalibrating.

He's taking captive every thought and making it obedient to the father.

He's stopping, and we need to as well.

Cue plug for Daily Sevens.

Cue plug for routine.

Cue plug for out of the busyness of each day that squishes in and takes every part that we say, no, no, push back, no.

I need to recalibrate my heart and my mind and my soul to what is true, to the one who I need to be close to.

So there's push back in doing this, in this obedience.

I think it's a really clear picture.

They had to be out there on the water, pushing against the wind to see this wonderful revelation, didn't they?

So where's God taking you so that you could receive what he has for you?

That's something for us to remember.

Never doubt what the Lord tells us on the mountaintop when we're in the valley, because there might be an epiphany about to happen.

If God the Son, then respect his instruction.

If God the Son, then expect his presence, purpose and power in our life.

Shortly before dawn, he went out to them walking on the lake.

He's about to pass by them as glorious beings for one living God did.

But when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost.

They cried out because they all saw him and were terrified.

Immediately he said to them, take courage, I am.

Don't be afraid.

Then he climbed into the boat with them and the wind died down.

If this, then that.

If Jesus is God, then what do we know about God?

All the omnis, don't we?

Omni-present, He's present everywhere.

Omnipotent, He's all-powerful.

Omniscient, He knows all things.

And this is Jesus.

He is self-limited.

He's in a human body.

And yet after His death and resurrection, He sends His Holy Spirit to inhabit His people.

And so His presence can be with us all.

If this, then that.

If Jesus is God now, He hasn't stopped being God.

He rose again from the grave.

He reigns in heaven, and He has given His Spirit to those who believe in Him and are born again.

If this is true, Jesus is God, He's in heaven, He's given His Spirit, His presence is available, then wherever you find yourself rowing, it might right now feel like it's against the wind.

God can be with you, amen?

Amen?

If this, if He's all present, then He's present with me, whether I'm rowing into a headwind or a tailwind.

Take courage, it is I, I am.

Don't be afraid.

He climbs into the boat.

The metaphor never becomes old, does it?

In our individual Western mentality, we love the metaphor of the boat.

You stay over there in your boat, I'm in my boat, our little family.

It may or may not be the best way to understand life, but it's a clear way to understand life.

We are in a little boat in a big sea, and Jesus is saying, I'm happy to be in there with you.

He climbed in, the wind died down.

He says, take courage.

God the Son promised to never leave us nor forsake us for every person who puts their faith in him and becomes a child of God by faith.

We should expect his presence.

How will the knowledge of the presence change how we face tomorrow?

We can remember that Jesus' instruction about how we should live our lives, his guidance about the steps that we should take in life are not without purpose, because he came into their boat, so they experienced his presence, but there was a purpose to their challenging rowing against the wind.

My memory, Richard might know you're a historian and a sailor, correct me afterwards, but I saw an old boat, a fishing boat on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and I don't think they had like a boom.

I don't think they could tack.

I think it was just a simple go with the wind.

I did.

Correct me later about that, how they did it in the first century, but the purpose that Jesus had involved them, as I said before, doing this hard row into the wind.

But there was an epiphany to experience in that.

There's a purpose behind the pain in this story.

At this stage, it's not a whole lot of pain for the disciples, but it's a wonderful picture of Romans 8.28, I think.

God is working all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purposes.

He has a purpose in the pain, behind the pain.

If this, then that, don't falter in your belief.

If Jesus is God now, he's God now, then he is with us, and there is purpose in whatever rowing we are doing into the wind.

Purpose in the confusing things of life.

At least this is a question we need to grapple with.

I think there is purpose in the patience, which is being required of us in every season of life.

Take courage, Jesus says, I am.

I am, it's I am who is with you.

If Jesus, if, then, if Jesus is God the Son, we can expect his presence in our boat, and we know that.

His purpose behind his plan, and we can expect his power manifest amongst his people.

When, verse 53, when they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret after this wobbly experience on the boat.

Where are we going?

What is he doing?

And they land at Gennesaret.

They anchor there.

As soon as they get out of the boat, people recognize Jesus.

They ran throughout the whole region, carry the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was, and wherever he went into villages, towns, or country sides, they placed the sick in the marketplaces.

They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.

They landed in a completely different location, and then the power of God turned up.

I would love to do something risky, and if it doesn't work, it's absolutely fine.

But I'd love to wander around with a microphone and ask you for a very short, I mean 30, 40 second testimony, and we've done this before.

When's it happened in your life that you felt like God was leading you to head one direction, and then a wind blew up, you got knocked off course, and you landed at your Gennesaret, and you saw the power of God in that detour?

Because I just have a feeling there are some of us who are already currently in the detour, and they need to be encouraged that there might be power at the end of that.

There might be some amazing power, the power of God and His grace in the detour.

You, oh, thank you, Phil.

And if no one shares, Phil will help us out.

Does that make sense, what I'm asking?

You ever have a detour in life, and you landed where you didn't think you were heading, and it was just, God was there.

Going back a long time now, when I was finishing school, I was thinking about doing fashion design when I left school, going to university.

And one day after the HSC, all my preferences had been put in.

Jono and I actually were sitting in the car waiting to go and do something, and in front of us was this tennis court, and there was a teacher there with all of her students.

And I was just watching them as she was teaching them something on this tennis court.

And in this moment, God totally changed my heart and said, be a teacher.

And it was a frantic race to change all my preferences for uni, and I was able to do that.

And then I got into teaching, and I feel like that teaching trajectory that I've had has shaped all of my life.

And I've been able to do so much more good, I believe, in speaking into kids' lives because that day, in that moment, I was heading in one direction, but God just gave me eyes to see that He had another path for me.

Praise God.

Thanks.

It's a little, like, well, could seem a little bit more trivial, but I was in uni determined to go and do six-month exchange in England, but that's the same as every history student in the world.

And so I didn't get in to the exchange program, but three weeks later, I was sitting in Spanish class, and they were like, hey, there's a four-week Spanish language intensive overseas.

I got into that, where I met one of my now best friends, April, who then introduced me to my wonderful husband.

And so that God fully was in that.

I was so upset about not going to England, but getting into this language program and meeting my wonderful husband and coming here and being part of this church.

So yeah.

Hi, everyone.

So Stephen and I are from Melbourne, as most of you know, and we had lots of different plans.

We know no one in Sydney, and our detour was here.

So one day I got a call from a teaching agency for a school I'd never heard of called Barker.

I was like, oh, what's this school?

They offered me a job, and we just looked at each other, but we know no one here.

Why would we come here?

And then the next day, we both had, no, we need to go there.

And now we're here.

Stephen's doing the kids here.

And yeah, we definitely...

That was a huge detour, but we definitely meant to be here.

Thanks, Kathleen.

Thank you.

Well, we could keep on these going, but we'll cut it there.

Thank you, Phil, for running that around.

If Jesus is God the Son, and it is, then respect His instructions, expect His presence, purpose and power, and inspect your heart to see if it's hard or soft to the truth.

Inspect your heart.

They were completely amazed, verse 51 says, for they had not understood about the loaves, their hearts were hardened.

Isn't it sort of just a weird, sad...

bad idea, insight?

They're at the epicentre of it all.

It's right there.

God is in human flesh and it's happening.

And they're like, did something just happen there?

Was there an epiphany that they're going to preach about in 2,000 years?

No, they're sort of dull.

But you know, who can be judgmental?

We miss, don't we?

We miss what God is doing.

Inspect your heart.

It's said that we are either moving towards Christ daily or probably drifting.

And we want to be moving towards Him.

God is constantly communicating to His creation.

Someone mentioned it in our prayer dome this week.

The heavens declare the glory of God day after day, night after night.

Speech goes to all the world.

Creation is shouting forth the reality of who God is.

And He's also whispering to us.

Are you hard-hearted or soft-hearted?

If Jesus is God the Son and He's a being that communicates because He's a good shepherd, don't you want to treasure up what He says in a soft heart?

I've always loved, as many of us do, love that line in Luke chapter 2 describing Mary.

Mary's had some epiphany.

She's had some crazy visitations from God through angels.

And then she gives birth to God the Son, Jesus, and she says, Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to those on whom His favour rests.

And verse 19, But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

Isn't that a lovely text?

If Jesus is God the Son, then when He speaks to me, when He works around me and through me, I want a soft, retentive heart.

If this, then that.

When Jesus walked on the water and was about to pass by them, this was God passing by humanity, demonstrating His glory.

But how cool is this?

But instead of just showing His back, He shows His face and His embrace, His whole life.

It's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4.

God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ.

Not His back.

He came.

God came.

He was one of us.

And He still is in Jesus.

We see the unveiled glory of God.

We see the face of God.

Jesus is God the Son.

And that changes everything.

Thank you.

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