Mark 6:45-56 - Jesus Walks On Water

Just like last week we find ourselves at one of those iconic events in the life of Jesus. And while this story may not be recorded in all four gospels like the last one (Luke does not record it), it is probably as famous, if not more so. "Walking on water" is a phrase that almost every English speaking person would recognize as an allusion to something only Jesus could do.

For some reason, too, this story has been the subject of much controversy. Post-enlightenment Christianity (the Enlightenment was the philosophical movement which dominated the world of ideas in the 1700s) has tried very hard, for some reason, to explain this story in a non-miraculous way, a story which Mark very clearly intends to be understood as a miraculous story.

The modernism of the 1800s tried really hard to give a decent theory of how the disciples could have believed this to be a miracle and yet allow us enlightened moderns to understand it in rational terms. We shall deal with those efforts in a bit.

Our job this morning, however, is not to just critique some previous misunderstandings of this passage, but to understand it ourselves in the way that Mark (and the Holy Spirit through Mark) intended for it to be understood. That is no small task.

And as famous as the story is, there is more to it than meets the eye. What Jesus is about to do is for his disciples. Remember, he is working on them, specifically on their faith. Last week when he multiplied the loaves and the fishes that was a miracle for their eyes only. It was a miracle so full of symbolism that they should have caught it. They should have seen and understood the deep significance of it. That they didn't becomes evident to us soon enough. 

Now he is going to show them something even more spectacular. And while Jesus is revealing something very special to his disciples, Mark, in recording it for us, is passing on that special revelation to you and me this morning. Rather than shaking our heads at those dimwitted disciples, or tsk tsking contemptuously at modernism's propensity to dismiss the miraculous, let us turn inward and search our own hearts and humble our own hearts before God and ask him to teach us through the word what he intended for his people to learn that stormy night on the Sea of Galilee.

What you just read was the introduction to my sermon on this passage of scripture in Mark. Below you will find the entire sermon recorded in MP3 format. Just click and a new window will open in your browser taking you to SoundCloud where you can stream the sermon on your device or download it for later listening. I hope you will listen. God bless.


Click here: Mark 6:45-56 - Jesus Walks On Water


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^