The part people remember is that he sank.
The part that gets left out is that he was the only person in the history of the world, apart from one, who ever got out of a boat onto open water and walked.
Both are in Matthew 14, and the order matters, and so does the size of each.
Here is the request.
And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.Matthew 14:28-29, King James Version
He asks for permission. He does not simply climb over. And when he gets the one word answer, Come, he goes.
He walked on the water. Matthew says it plainly, without decoration, as a thing that happened. There is no indication of how far. There is no indication of how long. What the text says is that a man got out of a boat in a storm in the fourth watch of the night, which is the dark before dawn, and walked.
Then this.
But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.Matthew 14:30, King James Version
When he saw the wind. The wind had been there the whole time. It did not get up when he stepped out. Verse twenty four already told us the ship was tossed and the wind was contrary. Nothing changed about the weather. What changed is that he looked at it.
The whole rescue is in one adverb
Now the verse everybody quotes for the rebuke, and the word that comes before it.
And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?Matthew 14:31, King James Version
Immediately.
That is the first word of the verse. Before the hand, before the catching, before one syllable of the question, there is an adverb about speed.
The cry in verse thirty is three words long. Lord, save me. And the answer in verse thirty one begins with immediately.
There is no interval in this passage. There is no sentence in which Peter is in the water alone waiting to see whether help is coming. The gap between the cry and the hand is the shortest gap Matthew has language for.
You are not going under, you are being caught. Matthew 14:31 opens with immediately before it says anything else, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that adverb in front for a person who has been reading a slow rescue into a fast one.
And notice where the rebuke is delivered from.
O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? is said by a man who is already holding him. The hand comes first in the sentence. The question is asked at close range, above water, with an arm around him, and not from a distance to somebody still going down.
You have been spoken to while being held rather than while being watched. The written word puts caught him before said unto him, and the same Spirit who kept that order is the reason nothing in this scene is said down at anybody.
Now the phrase in verse thirty that I do not want you to miss. Beginning to sink.
Not sank. Not went under. Beginning. He was in the process, one step into it, and that is where the hand arrived.
Which means the picture most people carry about this passage is wrong. Nobody in Matthew 14 goes under and gets fished out. A man starts to go down, and before the going down is finished, there is a hand.
You have been caught at the beginning of it rather than at the bottom of it. Matthew 14:30 says beginning to sink, and it is His Spirit who protects that word from being read as a story about somebody who drowned first.
Let me name what makes this particular kind of trouble so heavy, because it is not the water.
It is that it is public. Eleven men in a boat watched him ask, watched him get out, and watched him start to go down. Whatever else Peter had to carry back into that boat, he had to carry it back into that boat.
And here is what the passage does not contain: any word from the other eleven. Nobody says anything to him. There is no line where somebody says you should not have asked. The next thing that happens is that the two of them get in and the wind stops and the whole boat worships.
You have no recorded comment from the boat, and the passage moves straight from the catching to the worship. Matthew 14:32-33 has the wind ceasing and the ship worshipping and not one syllable of commentary about Peter, and the same Spirit who kept that silence is the reason the audience is not the judge here.
So stop rehearsing the sinking.
You have been running the same eleven seconds, the moment it turned, the faces, what it must have looked like from where they were sitting. And the passage gives those eleven seconds one verse, and gives the walking one verse, and gives the catching a word about speed.
You are held in the water, and the holding started before the question was asked. Matthew 14:31 puts immediately first and caught him second and the question third, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the reason that order reaches a Sunday morning instead of staying on a lake.
You have already done the thing nobody else in that boat attempted, and the record of it is not deleted by how it ended. The written word says he walked on the water in Matthew 14:29 and never takes it back, and the same Spirit who kept that sentence is the reason the getting out still counts.
And I will not put an ounce on you: nothing in this chapter suggests Peter should not have asked. He asks for permission in verse twenty eight and is given it in one word. What God authorizes, nobody may retroactively call presumption, and He has never once required a person to finish well before He would reach.
Declare this over yourself
- Eleven seconds of sinking in public, you are one verse and you are not the chapter. Matthew 14:29 says he walked on the water and never takes it back, and His Spirit holds that line over me. I am not going under, I am being caught.
- Courtroom I built out of their faces, get out, in the name of Jesus. You have had me answering to a boat that never said a word, and the written word goes straight from the catching to the worship with no comment about me in it, which ends you, and his Spirit set that down in the record and He means it here. Where heaven is silent, I will stop supplying a verdict.
- Lord, You are the God who caught first and asked afterward, and You are doing that here. Scripture puts immediately at the front of the verse and the hand before the question, and Your Spirit keeps them in that order over this week. I am holding my hand out, and I am counting on the speed and not on my footing.
Matthew 14:31
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