today—in which I tried to capture what many artists have tried to capture, Jesus walking on those gigantic waves and the white faces

of the Disciples as they look in panic because in the midst of this storm.…  We had some up in the mountains last week that I wish we could all just somehow recreate in here for just a moment, long enough for you to sense the threatening presence of a storm in the darkness of night.  And suddenly they see coming on top of the water—now they’ve never seen Jesus walk on water.  I mean, this is old stuff to us.  We been taught ever since we were in Sunday School Jesus walking on water.  I mean Being There, the movie, I’m sure got its idea at the close from the story of Jesus where this Chauncey Gardener is gonna be elected President walking out at the end on the water.  We, we absorb that—we got a set of mental gears in our brain, but try to be in that boat in the middle of the night never having seen even Jesus walk on water.  Here comes this specter on the water.  The storm’s bad enough, but what’s this other thing, the companion to the storm?  What’s this in the midst of the storm that’s coming at us?  And Jesus says—speaks out of the storm—“Be of good cheer.”  Tharsei is the word.  “Be of good courage.”  That’s three.

Four: John 16.  You marking these in your brain?—because I fail today unless I then can broaden each of these to our experience frame today and you find, not because I put you there, you find yourself in one of these five circumstances.  John 16:33: Disciples have followed Him, watched His rejection, felt the pain as the crowds begin to turn from applause to rejection as the light of His truth exposes them, particularly the hypocritical and self-righteous Pharisees, and they’re in an upper room and Jesus says “In the world you gonna have tribulation.”  But then He announces something even more devastating: “I’m not gonna be with you in the sense that I am

now physically present.  I am gonna leave, and in the world you’re gonna have tribulation.” 

And you have these Disciples sitting here who’ve had that quality about them that all of you have.  It’s really easy to think big-time Christianity under the influence of a message.  Most time I preach to myself because as I stand here and become a window through whom God’s Word shines as a light it hits me too.  And I, with part of my brain, while I preach can reflect back on the week that passed and see the stupidity of some of my reactions, the forgetting of God’s presence, the forgetting of the very truths that I’m used by God to communicate to you and I take a new fix.  And every time I preach one of these messages I walk out there, many times bothered because the weight and truth of the message is such that I feel the inadequacy of having communicated it properly, and that gets on my back.  But at least I know it communicated to me and that side of me says, “I ain’t gonna make the mistakes next week I made this past week,” and you do the same.  You take a fix on God’s Word and you walk out of here on high ground and bam!  You’re like the Disciples that, bam, you’re in the storm! 

Well now, these Disciples had even more than you have here on Sunday morning.  They had the Word of God in the flesh with them all the time.  But now He announces it ain’t gonna be that crutch around all the time the way it’s been.  They’re now gonna face a different kind of future.  I mean, in the storm they faced a different kind of ‘now.’  Now he’s warning them about—“Cheer up saints, it’s gonna get worse”—the future and He’s not gonna be there.  And the world that opposes them now will intensify its opposition and they’re gonna have terrible persecution and then He says “Be of good cheer.”  No, He didn’t say “Be of good cheer.”  He said a form of tharsei: “Be of good courage.”  Said something else but I want to focus on this.