Be Still

How many of you remember the first time you got into deep water? Now, we all learn to swim at some time, most of us at least. You get into a swimming pool. Usually the public swimming pools have a shallow end and then they have a deep end. When you're inexperienced or young, you start out in the shallow end and you creep along down toward the deeper end, maybe just kind of walking along and the water kind of rises up to your waist and then up to the middle of your chest and then maybe a little bit higher. Or you edge along down the edge of the pool and holding on to it until you get down into the deeper water. At some point, I remember the pool I grew up swimming in in my hometown. It had kind of a, not a real sharp drop off, but when it began to drop off, it dropped off. Very quickly you were up over your head into deep water. That's a pretty disconcerting situation to get off into deep water if you're not prepared for it because you either sink or swim, as we say. I remember one specific time in another body of water. This was a river. We had gone to a river there in southern Missouri for a Sunday outing. I remember kind of going out into the off the bank of the river. I was a real small kid at the time, but I'd taken swimming lessons early and thought I was pretty well prepared for things. In this river, I just kind of moved off into the away from the bank and it just kind of very slow. It seemed like it was going to go on forever and ever and just be kind of below my waist.

I remember taking one step and all of a sudden it just dropped off. I dropped off into deep water. I was scared because this was moving water in a river. It was cold. I couldn't find the bottom. I remember going down and then somehow scrambling around and getting back, getting myself turned around and getting back to where my feet finally found the sandy bottom of the river. It was a very frightening thought at that point because it came just so sudden like. My toes couldn't reach the bottom, but I was off into deep water. That's what I like to talk about this afternoon, deep water. Sometimes you and I fall off into deep water and we can't find the bottom. I guess this kind of fits in with what Mr. Morrison was talking about in his sermonette. I'm glad that things kind of fit together in this way. The Bible has a lot to say about deep water. It has a lot to say about water, I think, as you realize. Sometimes we may only focus on the fact that the Bible talks that we only focus on something like still water because probably one of our favorite Psalms is the 23rd Psalm. We all know what the 23rd Psalm says. It says, He leadeth me beside still water. Still water. Now, calm water is real nice, isn't it? Just a very peaceful little body of water that no waves, nothing deep. You can see to the bottom, still water is not threatening. Most of the times our life is kind of in still water and God leads us during still water. We are thankful for our blessings. We're thankful for what we have in our life at that particular time. It's easy to be thankful. But the Bible also talks about times when the water gets deep. There are lessons to learn there because God is just as much involved in our lives and He is still leading us even in deep water.

But we sometimes forget that. In fact, it's when at times when we are in deep water, when our toes can't reach the bottom, we can't seem to touch that bottom that our Father and Jesus Christ has the strongest desire to accomplish some of their most important work with us.

And so that's what I'd like to talk about today. I'd like to talk about God, deep water, and you.

We have to talk about all three because they all three work together. We can't have deep water without God, and obviously we're the ones that are off in deep water. There is a purpose, and we need to examine some of the accounts in the Scriptures that speak of deep water and I think help us to come to some understanding and things that we have never fully appreciated or considered.

The first account we can look at is in the book of Genesis chapter 1. Let's turn back to Genesis chapter 1 because this is where we first encounter deep water. It is in the account here of the recreation of the earth as we find in verse 2. The earth, it says, was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And so it seems that the earth in this period of time after the chaos of the rebellion of Lucifer and the period intervening in there, and we understand that between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis 1, there is this vast void of time. To bring it to our level for God, time is not like it is with us, but there is, you know, however many eons you want to fit in there, go ahead and fit them because that's where you will find the geologic record. And we come to the time of the recreation and we find the Spirit of God hovering over the deep. Now Genesis chapter 1, we are all familiar with and it's outlined and maybe it's been a while since we looked at it, but we know that it details the creation. And it comes down to the sixth day of the week with the creation fully complete and then goes right on into the creation of the Sabbath on the seventh day, but the sixth days of creation. And it's tempting to look at this as only a creation account, but it's far more than a creation account. What we are seeing here is an expression of God's nature and God's character. It's far more than just something to argue about or to rationalize, well, were they really days or were they epics of time? How did God do all of this? And is this a metaphor for evolution? How do you fit all of that in? You know, we can reason and argue and people do, but I think we miss the point because there's a deeper lesson here as there is to everything else we find in the scriptures. It's not something to be reasoned and argued about. It is a book about God's salvation and it is a revelation of God to us. And here we find an expression of God's glory, His control of creation. He owns the world and nothing is apart from Him. Nothing is beyond His reach. He is over the waters. And this is where it is at this time. When we go down to verse 9, we find that God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. And so in the process of this creation, the land was separated. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called seas. And God saw that it was good. So in the most elemental form, the land was separated from the water by, if you will, or raising up, coming right up out of the waters to form the land masses that we have above sea level. All of the land above sea level, all the way to the peak, to the highest peaks of approximately 50,000 feet that would be that of Mount Everest and the Himalayas. And from there all the way down to one foot above sea level to, what is it, the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth is 900 or 1,000 feet below sea level.

And all of it is dry land. But the seas are what's separated here at this point. But we see deep waters forming. God took what had been destroyed by pride in the rebellion of Lucifer, the fear and the pride of that period of time and the earth that had come to nothing, and He began to reshape it into something that would be made into His glory. He reached into the sea and He pulled out the dry land that His creation, you and I and all the other animals, would have a dwelling place, the dry land of this earth. But He didn't take away the water.

He didn't take away the deep waters. They became the seas. And there's a reason.

There is a very important reason. And as we go through this, we will understand why. But we see the creation. We see the sovereignty of God over this at this time. Now, this account in Genesis became a part of likely the oral tradition of the families of Adam from this point on, and was passed down from generation to generation. But we know that in the accumulation of time and the growth of the human family, the story was not understood even then. They didn't look at it necessarily from a rational scientific point of view like we would today. I say that. I don't know exactly. But they didn't have the whole body of physical knowledge about the world that we do, and to begin to analyze everything and try to reason why and the purpose from that point of view. But nonetheless, the human family did not retain God in their knowledge. And even though they had the story of God doing what we read here in Genesis, they still didn't believe God in their way and in their form at the time. So where we come down to chapter 6 of Genesis, at the time of Noah, and we find that the human life is exceedingly wicked. And there are problems in verse 5.

God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. So the Lord said, I will destroy the man whom I've created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. One man found grace. He found mercy. He found part forgiveness, unmerited in terms of just the whole human condition. But Noah was one that God decided through him he could rescue the human family. And he began to do work with Noah. And we know what that was. As God said to Noah in verse 13, the end of all flesh has come. I'm going to do something, and yet I won't destroy them all. I'm going to ask you to build an ark. I'm going to ask you to build a big ship, Noah.

And that ship is going to be the means by which life will be spared on this earth. And any that respond to what you say in your message and your work will be spared. And so our work began, not the first of God's work on the earth, but it perhaps is the first one of detail that we have.

And you know the story? He worked for over a hundred years in the building of an ark.

And whole teams of people, no doubt, were assembled. Families were nurtured in the shadow of that ark. Whole generations, over a period of a hundred plus years, grew up in the shadow of that work.

Children watched their parents go off to work on it.

And then they maybe grew up and worked in it themselves. And then some of the people probably got discouraged with it and went off and did other things. But the point is, there were a lot of people who made a living over a period of time off of the work of God.

And it was a work of salvation, in a physical sense, for human life. And God gave very detailed instructions as to how that was to be done, and the size of the ark. And it was probably larger than three football fields. Quite a huge, huge boat for its time and even for our own time today.

But in it, Noah put the animals and he put his family, eight people that we know of, from the account here. God remembered Noah. He never let Noah get lost. Noah was not lost in the storms of the deep waters that opened up from the earth when the flood came because God sealed Noah in the ark. In chapter 6 here, in verse 14, we read where the ark was being put together, in the way that it was fitted out, outfitted with from gopher wood, with rooms in the ark.

And he said, cover it inside and outside with pitch, some type of a sealant that didn't come in a little caulking tube. It was probably cooked up and prepared in large vats and smeared on all of the joints and the cracks, the crevices where that wood was fitted together. I'm sure that the craftsmanship was pretty good, that the joints were pretty tight, but inside those joints and around them was this pitch. Now, this word pitch is very interesting because it comes from a Hebrew word that means to cover. And the word is a Hebrew word called kippur. K-I-P-P-U-R. Kippur.

Now, you've heard of that word, if you pay attention to what the Jews call the day of atonement. They call it yom kippur, which means literally in Hebrew a day of covering, a day of covering.

And atonement is a day when our sins are covered by the sacrifice of Christ, and as represented by the sacrifices of that day. And so, here was this work of salvation being covered over with this pitch that sealed them in. And then down in chapter 7 and verse 16, we're also told that those that entered male and female of all flesh went in as God had commanded him, and the Lord shut him in. So, after everyone was in, it was God who shut and sealed into the ark for His purpose the family of man and all the other animals. In the midst of stormy, deep waters, God sealed them in. Those are some of the more important things to look at in this story. Just two points in particular. The covering and the fact that God sealed them in. We look at this story, and again, it's not for us to look at this story necessarily, although we are curious and we want to know how is this done and whatever happened to the ark. And you've all probably heard the stories of the theories that, you know, that on Mount Ararat today, or what they feel is Mount Ararat in Turkey, modern-day Turkey, frozen within this glacier, is the remnant of this huge structure that some say is the ark. How many of you have seen movies and heard those theories that Noah's ark is in Turkey and is up there? You know what? I don't care. I don't care if it is or not.

It's been an interesting story, but I've never really been so absorbed by it that, you know, in my studies or thinking that that was a proof or something that had to be brought out that it may or it may not be what some claim it to be, to be Noah's ark. It doesn't matter.

It really doesn't matter any more than so many of the other details. We always would like to find physical evidence to prove the Bible true, but I guess my point is that's not the point of the story. That's not the point of the story of the ark and the flood and Noah. The point of the story is what God was doing in sparing his people, mankind, in a time of deep water. Noah did as much as he could and he worked for over a hundred years on that. Sometimes when you get involved in the work, just as we've been involved in the work of God for decades, we tend to think of it as our work. And we forget that it's God's work. Sometimes the work gets in deep water and we have to look to God, but we forget that at times. Noah even that after all of those years, he had to rely on God to put the final touch on that ark or all of his work would have been for naught. Had he not been able to be sealed in, then it's quite possible that what was left undone could have upended the whole operation through the storm and the tossed waters and the deep waters of the flood. Because God put the finishing touch on that ark by sealing in Noah and his family and sealing it in, as we are told there in chapter 7. Otherwise, there may very well have been just enough of an opening, just enough of an area to have not withstood the rigors of that travel. That's the point to learn. God sealed them in. And then in chapter 8 verse 1, we find that God remembered Noah.

Through all the period of time that they were tossed upon the waters, not knowing what really was taking place fully, the extent of it all, God ultimately remembered. Noah and his family did not get lost in the storms or in the deep waters. And the lesson for us to learn is that God wants to know that we will trust Him when our toes don't touch the bottom, when we can't see past the horizon. You get into deep water and all you can see is what's right in front of you. And we may be underwater, and most likely we are. And we don't know if there's a bottom, and we keep going down and down. Noah not only entered the ark, but he stayed there, and he allowed God to complete his work even when he probably didn't have all the answers at that time.

And that's a lesson for us to learn. Even when we don't have all the answers, right there in front of us to learn and to understand why we are in deep water, we still have to look to God, and we have to learn, and we have to have patience, and we have to wait.

Because not even Noah, after all of those years, I can't imagine, knew it all and could finish it all off. God had to seal him in, or all of his work would have been for nothing. And God had to remember them and cause the waters to recede and bring that boat down in the right place. It was all within God's hands to do that. Deep waters for Noah taught him a big, big lesson. There's another story of deep water. This time it's from one of the minor prophets, the prophet Jonah. Let's turn over to Jonah. Jonah, Jonah, Jonah, Jonah, Jonah, number four. I always remember that from what I taught my kids about the minor prophets, how to get through the minor prophets to this day.

We all know the story of Jonah. It's just as famous as Noah.

It's amazing how some of these simple stories that we have are little Bible skits that are made out of. These are the great stories for a kids Bible class to act out, and they make great veggie tales. But this is more than a veggie tale, folks. This is for the times when we're in deep water. I guess if there's sometimes I think the veggie tales are nice to a point, but they tend to trivialize. And I would say for parents, they use them for what they are, but don't rely on them to tell the whole story. That's still our job to do. And while Jonah being swallowed by a great fish is a great story to kind of wrap around, there's a deeper lesson here. Jonah was a prophet that God said, look, I want you to go to this place, Nineveh, and I want you to cry against them, and I want them to change. There was only one reason for Jonah to go and march through the city of Nineveh and preach a message of repentance, and that's for the people to change. Jonah somehow figured it out that he didn't want that to happen. The wives of that, perhaps, are many. We could talk about a number of different theories, and all of them probably have some value to them. But the one that seems to fit for the immediate situation, and I think is at the heart and root of part of Jonah's problem, is that Jonah just didn't want them to repent. He didn't want them to have the knowledge that he would have brought to them. The Ninevites were Gentiles. They were not part of the chosen people. They weren't Israel. And even by this time among the people of Israel, there was this conceit of being the only ones, the chosen ones.

And everybody else was cut off. They weren't as good. They didn't have stars upon stars.

And I think that that was really at the heart of Jonah's problem, as much as anything else, is why he didn't want to go there. And so he went down to Joppa, which was on the coast, and he bought a ticket on a boat to Tarshish, and he sailed off. And through the first chapter, we find that pretty soon there was a big tempest on the sea in verse 4. A big storm came up on the deep waters of the Mediterranean Sea. And the boatmen didn't know what was taking place.

And finally, they threw Jonah in the sea when he revealed what was really happening. He finally figured it out. And so they threw him off into the water. And Jonah had the opportunity to come to understand deep water, because he went down and down and down. And we were told that God, in verse 17, had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Now, again, this is just as fantastic a story as the creation account, or the man building an ark and herding a bunch of sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, and whatever else on that boat. I've read stories that there have been actual accounts of whalers being swallowed by whales and living through the experience after several days. The whale eventually caught, the belly slid open, and out comes the sailor that had fallen overboard. He's a bit wrinkled, and the acids have bleached his skin, but still alive. I've read stories of that actually happening. So, it could happen. I mean, a person could survive in the belly of a fish for a few days. It appears. But that doesn't necessarily prove it one way or the other. Again, you have to look at the story and believe what God says. It's not that fantastic for this to be accomplished if you believe all the other aspects of the Bible. But again, it's a lesson for us. It is a story for us to learn. This is not just some physical event. This is a matter of God's intervention. This is a matter of a lesson that Jonah learned when he was helpless, when he couldn't swim, and his toes couldn't reach the bottom. And he was falling in deep water, and he came to himself. And he came to fully appreciate God's mercies and God's intervention. In chapter 2, verse 1, he prayed. Now what would you do in the belly of a fish? You'd pray. What do we do when we find ourselves in deep water? I hope we pray. Let's look at what Jonah prayed. He said, I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, and he answered me, Out of the belly of Sheol, which is the grave, and hell, I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me. All your billows and your waves passed over me. Then I said, I have been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple. It's just that when we get into deep water, of a spiritual matter, a physical ailment, that we think God isn't listening. We think God's passed over us, and He's cast us out of His sight, and He's not hearing. We've all thought that when we are at our worst, when we are in a time of despair and discouragement and depression for whatever reason, for whatever has happened to us, that is the human impulse to think He doesn't care. We've been cast out. He said, yet I will look again toward your holy temple.

The waters surrounded me even to my soul. The deep closed around me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains. The very foundation of the mountains are in the depths of the ocean. They're in the deepest parts of the ocean in places that no one has gone.

The ocean, indeed, today is still the last great frontier. They have not been explored. We've explored parts of the moon more than we have the depths of the oceans. We have not been able to go to because of the limitations there. The earth with its bars closed behind me forever, yet you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord, my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord. And my prayer went up to you and to your holy temple. When he got to his bottom, when his soul fainted, that's when he remembered God. Sometimes it may take a while to get to that point, but Jonah remembered God. And when we get to that point, we tend to remember him.

Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. You know, Jonah had a problem with idolatry, I think, is why he mentions this. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. An idol is anything, any person, any physical thing, any idea that comes between us and God. Now, Jonah was not a pagan, and he was a prophet, and he was being sent to a pagan land, or was going to be sent to Assyria, who worshiped all kinds of gods, to urge them to repent from that. So, I don't think Jonah had a wooden idol of any form that he bowed down to. But I think that Jonah probably had certain prejudices, preconceived ideas, ideas about other people, ideas about himself, his own people, other nations that became his own idol. And it limited his understanding of God, and it became a barrier between worshiping God and understanding God. That's why he went the other direction and tried to run from God, because he thought he knew better. This was, I think, an idolatry of ideas in Jonah's mind. And so, he said, if you regard worthless idols and ideas and thoughts and opinions can become our own idols. We forsake mercy. We then turn away from the mercy of God and the love of God. But he said, I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I avowed.

Salvation is of the Lord. And then God spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land, out of the deep water. And Jonah, his toes found the bottom. And he could stand up and dry out and get his tan back and get on with what he had to do. And the rest of the story shows that he did. We're not concerned with the rest of the story of Jonah here today.

Just to look at, he came to understand God in the depths of deep waters and to appreciate God's mercy and God's intervention. And he read his mind and his heart of his own idols. And he was now able to do what God wanted to do. But he had to go through some pretty deep water to learn that.

Deep water lessons are not reserved only for the Old Testament. There are some in the New Testament that we can learn as well. In Mark chapter 4 is one. In the fourth chapter of Mark is the occasion of Jesus calming the winds, the waves that came up while he and his disciples were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. In Mark chapter 4, the first verse tells us that he began to teach by the sea. And this is the Sea of Galilee. And a great multitude was gathered to him so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea. The whole multitude was on the land facing the sea. So he was, in the beginning here, he's teaching from the sea, the Sea of Galilee. And he goes through a number of parables. And we come down to verse 35 in the story. After a day of teaching, when evening had come, he said to them, let us cross over to the other side, to the other side of the sea. Now the Sea of Galilee is a very beautiful spot. It's about 600 feet below sea level.

It is an inland sea. Some would say it's just a large lake. In fact, one of its names, Lake Tiberius, is that of a lake. But it's also called the Sea of Galilee. And it's a huge lake. It's not as big as Lake Tahoe out in California if you've ever been to Lake Tahoe. It's not quite that large, but it is a large body of water. You can see from one side to the other very easily.

And it is still fished to this day. And there are fishing boats that go out every morning and bring back in their day's catch off the Sea of Galilee. It is the prime source of water for the state of Israel and a very beautiful spot, one of the must-see spots in the land when you go over there to do the tours like some of us have done.

But the story here of a wind coming up and creating a great storm is something that still happens to this day. I've been on the water twice of the Sea of Galilee, and both times they were pretty calm. But because it's 600 feet below sea level, and the prevailing winds in that region come off the Mediterranean and across the land, and they come to this point in Israel, and they drop down 600 feet, and there are some steep passes in the mountains there from which the wind is funneled down through there.

And to this very day, they can whip up some quite sudden and strong storms. Waves of up to 20 feet are not uncommon to happen, and for them to come up quite quickly as the winds will come across the plane and down through the passes and creating kind of a cyclonic effect and stirring up very quickly some storms on the sea. I don't know that I'd want to be out there when that was happening.

I haven't seen it, but the stories are that what this describes is a real effect. Now, they left the multitude in verse 36, and they took him along in the boat as he was, and other little boats were also with him. It's interesting. You can see to this day, a few years ago they discovered a little boat, a little fishing boat that had been buried in the mud along the banks or along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and there was a kind of a drought when some were in the waters that receded, and they found some people found the remains, the wooden hull of a first century fishing boat.

And they had to be very careful with it. It was quite an elaborate process how they even got it out of the mud and then into a center or place where then they could restore it. And it took a couple of years through a very elaborate process to restore the wood to where it wouldn't just crumble after 2,000 years of being submerged in water.

It's an amazing process that they did, but they've got it in a museum. You can go and see the hull and the frames of a small fishing boat from the first century. They don't make any claims as to whose boat it was, but it is a representative type boat of the fishing boats of that era. So, when you read here of the little boats, I can picture that in my mind and you can see that from this one boat that they have found over there that was large enough for 12 men to have been in and even for them to stretch out as we find that was being done here.

Now, in verse 37, it says, a great windstorm arose and the waves beat into the boat so that it was already filling. But Christ was in the stern, in the back of the boat, asleep on a pillow, and they awoke him and said to him, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Christ was sleeping through it, and he arose and he rebuked the wind, and he said to the sea, peace be still. Why did he say that? Again, he could have said anything. He didn't have to say anything. He could have just waved his hands. He could have said, you know, be calm. But he said, peace and be still.

And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. But he said to them, why are you so fearful?

How is it that you have no faith? So he turned this into a faith lesson.

They were on deep water, and the boat was in danger of being swamped and submerged, and they feared for their lives. They feared exceedingly and said to one another, who can this be that even the wind and the sea obey Him? Christ was preaching from the boat.

They had seen miracles already, and they didn't believe what was even possible. They feared, and they had to be shown a lesson. They panicked, even though they had seen miracles to this point, and they didn't really make the connection to themselves. To them, Christ just seemed unaware, unconcerned. He was asleep. How many of us have been in a storm of life, have something come up quite quickly upon us? Things were calm one minute, and the next day our lives were turned upside down, and we are fearful. Change is taking place. Life is what's happening to us, and we are fearful, and we hadn't planned for it. We didn't want it. We didn't expect it. The cold winds of sorrow and the hot blasts of passion, the storms of doubt are about to sink us and topple us.

And we think Christ is asleep. We think he's not concerned. This, again, is not just a story written to chronicle an event, but it is a part of the revelation of God to proclaim our existence in Him and our companionship with Him. He not only calms the waters and the storms of nature, but He calms the storms of our life that swirl around us. And who among us do not have those storms swirling around us and need to be reminded of what He says here? Peace. Be still. You know, when these storms like this come, we have basically two options. We can worry.

We can be fearful. And we can judge that Christ or God the Father does not care and is not concerned. And we can pray. And we can do all those things. And we don't see an intervention. We don't see an answer. And we can continue to worry and fear and think God is abandonedness. And that is a very real reaction that we are prone to. That's one option that we have. The other option is to resist that fear. To resist it and to put trust in Him. Recognizing that these Scriptures are telling us that God is right there. He's with us. He's there through the duration of the ride that we can trust Him. That He cares for us. That even if the storm is not immediately taken away, that if the winds are still storming about our lives, if the waters seem to be four foot high and rising, and not abating, not receding, there is still a place that we can find some calm. There is still a port to pull into. And that calm is in the center.

Just as in the eye of a storm, it is in the center that it is the calmest. And everything is swirling around us. And that really is in the location of our heart, of our mind.

And it is there that we have to have the calm and find the peace. Now, it's been said that all the water within the oceans of the world cannot sink the smallest of boats, unless there is one thing, and that's a hole. If there is a hole in that boat, it will sink.

But if it is well made, even the smallest boat will not be capsized. Doubt is a hole.

Doubt and fear are holes that can sink our boat. And like Noah's Ark, we have to use the pitch, not just of Christ's sacrifice, but the reality of his companionship with us and in us to plug the hole, to seal over, and to protect, and to cover, and to believe that indeed that is there.

And it's just when it gets the worst, when it seems like there's not going to be any answer, that at times the fear flips over and becomes courage. There's one famous saying that says, courage is fear, which lasts a moment longer. Courage is fear that lasts a moment longer.

You know, when you look at people who do courageous things, and from time to time you'll read of an act of courage by someone, a common citizen who wasn't planning to do something courageous that day, but found themselves in a situation where someone's life was in danger, and they had to react. And there was fear. It wasn't planned. Soldiers received the Medal of Honor because they do things in the heat of battle that are very courageous acts to save lives.

Sometimes those Medal of Honor recipients, they receive that posthumously.

It just recently was one soldier was honored at the White House who gave his life, and he's either Iraq or Afghanistan, was given the Medal of Honor. I remember a few years ago reading a story of an airplane that was taking off from what was then the national airport, now the Reagan National Airport in Washington, on a winter night, and it was icy, and it didn't make it off. It didn't couldn't get enough lift, and it crashed into the Potomac River there in Washington.

And it was right at rush hour, and people were coming across the bridges down the roads, and they saw this. And many passersby stopped their cars and got into the icy cold waters of the Potomac River and pulled people out of the wreckage of this this airplane. I remember Ronald Reagan recognizing one of them in his State of the Union message one year. I remember the name of the guy to this day. His name was Lenny Skutnik. He had Lenny Skutnik stand up there in the gallery of the House of Representatives and recognize him for his courage. Lenny Skutnik was a worker coming home from work that day, and he happened to be right there and saw that, and he was responsible for saving several people. He wasn't normally courageous. He probably had his own. He was probably just as chicken as the rest of us at the rest of the time, but in a moment in time, he was able to overcome his fear or master it or just ignore it, and he acted. Courage is fear, which lasts a moment longer and results in something courageous being done.

We are always fearful when we are at the toes, can't find the bottom.

Don't feel guilty and don't feel unworthy and don't feel like lessons that we probably will not learn when the waters are still.

There's another story of water and deep water with the disciples, and you probably already thought about that back in Matthew 14, where on another occasion on the Sea of Galilee, Christ was walking toward his disciples on the sea.

He had sent them away, and then he went up into a mountain by himself to pray in verse 23, but in the evening hours, he was alone. The boat that carried his disciples was in the middle of the sea, in verse 24, tossed by the waves, for the wind was contrary. Another storm had quickly come up, and in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went to them walking on the sea. We always joke when we're out on one of those little excursion boats on the Sea of Galilee, who's going to get out and walk on the Sea of Galilee? Nobody's tried it yet. I've been out there twice in the last two years, and I haven't done it. We were talking this last time a few weeks ago, and saying, somebody ought to just take a picture of somebody with the sea in the background and then do a little Photoshop work and put them right on top of the Sea of Galilee to feign walking on the sea. But we didn't do that. He was walking on the sea toward them, and the disciples saw him walking, and they thought it was a ghost. They cried out for fear. But immediately he spoke to them, saying, Be of good cheer, yet is I. Do not be afraid. This was with everything tossing around, and again, they could see him, and he said, Don't be afraid. Peter took the challenge, and he said, Lord, if it's you, command me to come to you on the water. And so he said, Come. And Peter, being the impetuous one, when he had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus.

And he walked on the water, too. That's what you have to relearn. He did walk on the water for a period of time. One step, three steps, I don't know, he began to take a few steps, but he saw what he was doing. The wind was boisterous. He was afraid, and he began to sink. And he cried out, saying, Lord, save me. Peter began to go down into deep water, and his feet couldn't touch bottom.

Now, I've always, you know, when I've read the story, I've wondered, how deep, how far down do you think he went? Did he get up to his ankles, to his knees, his thighs?

Did the water come up to his belly button? Did Christ let it come up to just the bottom of his chin? Or maybe to the bottom of his lip? Or did he let it come up even over his nose? And the only thing he could do was see. I don't know. I often wonder, how far down did he go before Christ and let him and pulled him out? But he did pull him out. He cried out, he said, Lord, save me. Then immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him. That big hand from somewhere.

It was like the lifesaver that I used in a sermon earlier this year. It comes and saves a person drowning in the ocean. They say, I'm a lifeguard. I'm a rescue swimmer, and I'm here to save you. Christ reached out his hand and he saved him immediately.

And he said to him, oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt? Peter had a problem. He doubted.

He was moving along and then he got his eyes off of Christ. And he began to look at the reality around him of wind and water. And he began to think, this is not logical. This is not supposed to be. What am I doing? And he began to fear. And that's what happens. We get our eyes off of God and we look at everything around us and all that is crashing around us. And that's all we see.

And it's real and it hurts and there's fear. And we can't find the bottom because we realize we're in deep water. And it is at a time like that that Christ is saying, oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt? And so when we read this, and again, it's another one of those stories that it's the stuff of Sunday schools stories. It's the stuff of sermonettes and, you know, a nice Saturday afternoon illustration in a sermon. But it's more than that. Whenever you and I find ourselves in deep water, these become the essence of our life. The lessons of these stories relate to us in a spiritual way now. And they become more than just a very nice story that we can spend 15 minutes on and speculate about. This becomes our life to begin to deal with that fear, to begin to deal with doubt, to begin to deal with the fact that we can't reach the bottom and our toes can't find the bottom. And we are flailing, we're doing our best to stay afloat, and we're reaching out for something. And it is when this happens that we are reaching out to God.

We are in deep water. He's there and He's watching, and we might be getting lower and lower, but at some point He's going to reach out His hand, and He's going to pull us up.

And in the process, we're going to learn something that we would not have learned had we stayed in the boat or on the shore. Not that we put ourselves into deep water, we put ourselves into the problems of life. We all know that enough of them come without our seeking. But when they come, we have to deal with it. We have to learn. If it's an illness, if it's a conflict in our life, someone else's life that impacts us, whatever it might be that's difficult for us at that point, we have to recognize the deep water that we are in, and we have to deal with it.

Because we have anchored in our heart and life the fact that we belong to one person, to God.

There's one other story of deep water that is good, and that is in the book of Acts, chapter 27. I won't read out the whole story, but it's another story of deep water, this time with the Apostle Paul, who was a prisoner on his way to Rome to appear before Caesar. And again, they're on the Mediterranean, and a storm comes up. And he had warned them about going off, but they went anyway, and the weather turned. And in chapter 27, after a period of time, verse 21, Paul stood in the midst of them, and he said, Men, you should have listened to me, and not have sailed from Crete, and incurred this disaster and loss. Now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For there stood by me this night an angel of God to whom I belong, and whom I serve, saying, Do not be afraid, Paul, you must be brought before Caesar, and indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you. Therefore take heart, men, for I believe God, that it will be just as it was told me.

And so, in a prophetic vision, an angel had told Paul that you're going to live through this, the ship's going to be lost, you're going to live through it. That didn't mean that he was personally delivered, he still was a prisoner. He went on to Rome, but their life was going to be spared. But what he says about it here is very, very profound. He said in verse, let's see, let's put my eyes back on it again here.

Verse 23, he said, He recognized that he belonged to God, and he served that God. He belonged to God.

We belong to God. We belong. We've been bought and paid for by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Do we serve Him? Do we serve Him in the good times when we walk beside still waters and are thankful when we counter blessings? Do we know that we belong to Him when we are in deep water? And do we still serve Him then? That's when the test so often comes, in deep and stormy waters. Paul here was offered companionship and encouragement. God does not take away the storms at all times. He gives us what we need to get through the storm. The story of the Bible is not about physical deliverance. It's about spiritual salvation. And God is more concerned that our spiritual character and our spiritual lives be molded, fashioned, and formed into His character for eternity. That's what He's preparing us for. That's what He's dealing with us for. He is preparing us for something far beyond this time and place. He's preparing us for what we read about here in Revelation 21. Revelation 21. This is what God's preparing us for. Where John saw a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. Something completely different from what we read about in Genesis 1. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and also there was no more sea.

In the new heavens and the new earth, to look at it, to take it literally, there is no more sea. On beyond the millennium, on beyond the time of the great white throne, the period of the new heavens and the new earth, it says there is no sea.

All who will be a part of this new heaven and this new earth will not have to worry about deep waters. We will have already gone through our deep waters. We will have already passed through them, and we will have learned, and we will have been prepared for this period of time.

That's why we experience deep waters today, and that's why there is much to learn today.

Seas throughout human history have separated man from man, nation from nation. America's separation on both coasts by the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean have played a prominent role in its whole history. England separated from the European continent by the North Sea and the English Channel, Australia, other countries. It's interesting to just to look at that from a historical point of view. The seas have separated people, too, but it's going to come in time. It appears when there will be no more seas, no more deep waters. And those of us who will be a part of that, those who will be there, there will be no more need for deep water in those trials. We will have come to understand and to appreciate through faith and confidence in God's perfect answers.

But those perfect answers come when our toes can't touch the bottom, when we are flailing and we have to rely on Him. And when we come to that time when we can't touch bottom, but we come to realize that we stand on the rock of our salvation, that is when we learn the lesson of deep waters. And that will prepare us for the time in the new heavens and the new earth when there will be no more sea.