Supposing you are not a Christian; supposing you have never been converted – there is a lot in this miracle for you. You set out in the darkness, rowing against the wind and the waves. Something inside you is telling you, you want to find the Lord, you want to know Christ, you want to hear this message. But at first it is a tangle and you don’t understand it, and as much as you want to go forward, you’re thrown back. You’re afraid of your friends. You hear cynical comments. Doubts are thrown into your mind. You are in the dark and the wind is against you, and you are not making very much progress. They were rowing and labouring hard, and maybe you’ve been doing that too. Reading the Bible, coming to church, asking about this, that, and the other, but at first you don’t make much progress. And there may be much fear in you: ‘What will happen to me if my life is changed, can I take that?’ Then it will be as though Christ appears walking on the water. Things will become much more clear to you. It’s as though you see him – you don’t, of course, but suddenly you understand: he went to Calvary for me; he suffered and died in agony to pay the eternal punishment due to me for my sin. He is the Lord of love, and he calls people to himself. Now you see him, and he says ‘It is I; be not afraid. I will save you, I will bless you.’ They brought him into the boat and similarly, you trust him. You receive him and everything he says, and immediately, you have arrived at the land, because he has changed you – as soon as you submit to him.
This miracle reflects the characteristic ways of Christ, and so it is also a message for disciples. Why did Christ walk on the water? Why did he come to them in these circumstances? Because the mission of Christ is about to be rejected, much more than it had ever been before. In verse 66 of this chapter we read, ‘From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.’ It is going to become more and more difficult. In chapter 7 John tells us, ‘After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him’ (John 7:1). This miracle is not for the general public, it is just for the disciples. It is going to prepare them for the much harder times ahead. There will be times of darkness when conditions and the wind is dead against us. There will be times, for all the labouring and the effort, and the pulling on the oars, we seem to make such slow progress. It will happen in your personal life, and circumstances, when they seem to be against you. It will happen in your witness, in the office, when it seems nobody’s listening. You’ll have times in the church where, in spite of all the teaching in the world, we seem to make heavy weather before the next period of blessing perhaps. It’ll happen, perhaps, through persecution, in some shape of form. This is to prepare us.