The Gospel of John

The 5th Miracle; The Sign of Transcendence

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 16- 70

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Track: 016

Dictation Name: RR197H16

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Year:

Let us worship God. I will come into Thy house in the multitude of Thy mercy and in Thy fear will I worship towards Thy holy temple. Let the words of my mouth and the mediation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight oh Lord my strength and my redeemer. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for the multitude of Thy mercies, they are new every morning. We thank Thee that Thy purpose for us is all together good in Jesus Christ. That in him Thou hast said yea and amen to us and so we come to say yea and amen unto Thee. Work in us that which is pleasing in Thy sight, take away from us our concerns and fix our heart on Thy concerns. Bless us this morning by Thy word and by Thy spirit, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is from John 6:16-21. Our subject: The 5th Miracle; The Sign of Transcendence. John 6:16-21.

“ And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea,

17 And entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them.

18 And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew.

19 So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid.

20 But he saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid.

21 Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.”

This is the miracle that follows the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. It is also recorded in Matthew 14:22-33 and Mark 6:47-52. In Matthew we are told of Peter’s request that he be made to walk on the water, then his fearfulness, his sinking into the waters and our Lord’s rescue of Peter. The attention in John’s account has as its focus our Lord’s total power over all natural forces. After this miraculous feeding according to Matthew 14:23 Jesus went up into the mountain apart to pray. At the same time we are told in Matthew 14:22 that He constrained His disciples to enter the boat and sail to the other side. Since the crowd would have expected Jesus to go with the disciples it was easier for our Lord to slip away from the people. When the disciples were about halfway across the sea they saw Jesus coming to them and were afraid, assuming it was an apparition and they cried out for fear, Matthew 14:26 tells us. Galilee was subject and is to sudden storms and it could be dangerous. They may have feared that the supposed apparition was a sign of their near end, that they were going to die. The disciples were attempting to reach Gethiseda according to Mark 6:15. John tells us that they were going towards Capernaum which was close to Getheside. [sp?] The multitude had wanted to make Jesus their king but He escaped from them. His calling was neither to be a bread king nor a miracle king. In all that He did he was calling attention to His redemptive work. Not to the bread which passes away, men can only have Christ on His terms not on theirs.

As Calvin so tellingly commentated and I quote:

“And what avails the pretense of zeal when by our disorderly worship we offer a greater insult to God than if a person were especially and deliberately to make an attack on His glory. Obedience is the foundation of true worship. We must therefore abide by His word for as soon as we turn aside in the smallest degree the truth is poisoned by our leaven so that it is no longer life itself.” Unquote.

Calvin thus stressed the fact that obedience, faithfulness to the word of God is the key. William Hendrickson called attention to the fact that this miracle is and I quote:

“Really four miracles in one. First Jesus walks on the waters of the sea, second Matthew tells us that He causes Peter to walk on the sea also. Third He causes the storm to cease when He enters the boat. Fourth when He enters the boat from a spot in the middle of the sea they are suddenly on the shore.”

Clearly Jesus transcended all human limitations and powers and yet the multitude and the disciples wanted Him to meet man’s expectations, man they felt should set the standard for Jesus’ behavior. Moreover in this case it was Judean man that was to set the standard. The people saw Jesus in terms of the miracles, especially of the loaves and fishes. Not in terms of who He was and what He was and in one way or another had declared Himself to be. We know that even after the resurrection at the time of the ascension the disciples still had Judaic expectations and asked Jesus when He would restore the kingdom to Israel. Our Lord told them that the coming of the Holy Spirit would give them a world perspective according to Acts 1:7-8.

G. Campbell Morgan was right in analyzing the disciple’s failure and I quote:

“Now mark this carefully. None saw that sign, the miracle at sea, but His own disciples. It was a sign for them only, why? I can only answer suggestively, it seems to me that when He sent them in that boat across the sea He knew the keenness of their disappointment and their perplexity that He would not be made king. Perhaps they wondered and questioned as to whether after all He had kingly power and authority. So He gave them a demonstration of His present kingship and that in the realm of nature. It was as though He said ‘I have refused to be crowned King upon the basis of bread but make no mistake I am king in every realm, king in the realm of nature, contrary winds cannot hinder me, the tossing sea cannot overwhelm me, I am king’.” Unquote.

This sign like the miraculous feeding strikes at man’s expectation that God meets man’s requirements and hopes. But the source of all determination is God, not man. The believer cannot play the unbeliever’s game, fallen man wants to be his own god and lawgiver. He says I will do this, God, for you, but now do what I want for me. Redeemed man cannot because he now believes require God to meet his terms. Our faith cannot command God. The meaning of man’s salvation is that now God’s will, not ours be done. Both signs require God centered life of us, we cannot expect God to please us, we must please Him. God is not man’s happy servant ready to jump at man’s whim now because man has supposedly said yes to Jesus. Such views place churchmen in the same place as the scribes and Pharisees of old.

Raymond E. Brown was right in saying that the multitude wanted a political Messiah and this Jesus refused to be.

“He will not be a political messiah; He will not be a personal Messiah to make our lives easier. He will not be psychological Messiah to give us peace of mind, He will not be the Messiah of the church to make the church prosper as it wants to prosper, He is God’s Messiah. He was far more than the terms ‘the prophet and the king’ could imply. In Brown’s words and I quote the walking on the water is a sign that He interprets Himself. A sign that what He is can be fully expressed only by the divine name ‘I am’.” Unquote.

The hope of the people is in their national or self-realization and it is in their eyes God’s duty to bless their hopes. For too many people reversing the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s opening statement the chief end of God should be to glorify man and to enjoy him forever. That was seriously stated shortly after the war by a very, very prominent scientist who said if there was a God this is what he should be doing, glorifying man and enjoying him forever. Well in the church all this and more is expected for a simple costless yes to Jesus. Perhaps one should not say costless, a woman of wealth and beauty was some years ago very angry with me for my theology and my postmillennial beliefs. How could God expect her, she said, to go through the tribulation when she had given up her two great loves, smoking and dancing, for His sake. When I reminded her that I was an Arminian and my people had undergone great tribulation and why should she be spared? She dismissed my statement as irrelevant.

This sums up the issue very clearly. The goal of humanism in the church as in Israel of old is to make our group or our lives the center whereas Christ is the center alone. Our Lord’s miracle is the sign of transcendence. We cannot limit God nor the Son of God in terms of our vision and our hopes. He is the Lord, not man. We are man centered, totally so in Adam and in Christ we are saved but we are saved sinners and in this life not free entirely of sin. And so we constantly want God to make us the center. That’s our everyday frailty. Isaiah tells us however of the arrogance of all attempts to control God and He summarizes it thus in Isaiah 40:13-17:

[Insert scripture]

All nations before Him are nothing and they are counted to Him as less than nothing and vanity. We cannot control the spirit of the Lord nor teach the spirit anything.

Neither God nor the spirit needs our advice, our instruction. In God’s sight the nations are like dust on scales, too light to be weighed, they are as nothing. The arrogance of man in assuming his own priority before God is an amazing fact. It is a temptation for all of us. Our little world is what matters most to us and that is good up to a point but we cannot confine God to our world. In this miracle the sign of transcendence, Jesus compels us to see that our lives must be God centered, not fixed upon ourselves. God centered not self-centered and that is our constant problem and temptation. The disciples failed at this point. We all fail but in Christ we all have the continuing mercy, grace and love of God so we need to be grateful to God that He is greater than we are, the world and the men and the peoples of this world and all creation. And we need to fix our hearts and minds on Jesus Christ in whom our true joys are always to be found. Let us pray.

Our Father we thank Thee that Thy word reminds us that our focus is to be greater than ourselves, our families, our loved ones, our church, our nation or even our world. Our focus is to be on Jesus Christ our Lord. Give us grace day by day to wean ourselves as we daily must from our concerns, our joys and our sorrows and fix them upon Jesus Christ in whom our true joy and peace are to be found. In Him we pray, Amen.

Are there any questions about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] Were all the disciples in the boat?

[Rushdoony] Yes all twelve were in the boat.

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes they all had it, several of them were fishermen and experienced sailors, they knew how great the miracle was and yet in spite of this until the day of Pentecost they were still like the multitude in the miraculous feeding thinking of Jesus as someone who could set up a marvelous kingdom, overthrow Rome and become an emperor. After all at least one of the disciples is described as the zealot. Now the zealots were a revolutionary group, their entire focus was on the Jewish empire.

[Question] It seems to me that they must have been around long enough to see a lot of kingdoms rise and fall, did any of them give any thought to what happens after?

[Rushdoony]Very good question, very, very good. The thing is that men over the ages have been sure that the final empire is theirs. And they’ve used terms to describe themselves as the final empire. We are very familiar with the expression ‘eternal Rome’¸ the Roman Empire thought that way. They were sure they would never, never be overthrown and I can recall the very common saying and true one when I was a boy the sun never sets on the British Empire. Now that’s history. Well, we’ve seen the French Empire, the British Empire, the German Empire, the Russian Empire all crumble in our time and others that are briefer in their span but just as ambitious in their claims. So men believe that theirs is the final order.

After all one of the best sellers in the past oh, few years, was that of a prominent scholar and the title was ‘the End of History’. In other words we’ve reached a status in history whereby all we are going to do is to put things in their place to create the world order that is the final order and to all practical intent history has ended. The imagery used not only by Marxists but by some of these people is that of the beehive or the anthill. That’s the goal of history and that’s why history ends. Everybody gets put into their place and stays there permanently generation after generation like the bees and the ants. They lose self-consciousness according to this dream of history, which goes back to Plato, and after that everyone unconsciously does his work and doesn’t really think of himself as a person. Now that’s been a reoccurring dream, it certainly came into focus in Plato but there is no reason to believe it was original with him. So the idea that man will create the final order goes back to the Tower of Babal. That was to be the final world order. The dream is still with us.

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony]Well put, a self-perpetuating self-delusion, yes.

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Could you speak up a bit?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes. It’s not evidence that counts with man; it’s the state of his heart. Does he put his total reliance upon the triune God or upon himself? There are only two religions, the religion of the bible and humanism, the religion of fallen man and of the Tower of Babal. And that religion is very much with us. The world is a battlefield, always has been, between the two. We should not expect peace in that war and the more we are in Christ the more we will be under attack outwardly and inwardly because we represent the power of God in this world. We represent His kingdom and we will be subjected to hostile attacks by spiritual and human sources.

Any other questions or comments? If not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank Thee for this Thy word. Thou hast called us out of the world of Adam, out of the world of sin and death, out of ourselves to Thee to be Thy people in truth and power. Bless us mightily as we move forward in this Thy calling. Pick us up when we stumble, comfort us in our heart and make us strong for Thy kingdom. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.