There are three teaching conversations in these verses: 1) between Jesus and the Pharisees, 2) Jesus and the crowds, and 3) Jesus and his disciples. The first is Jesus’ response to those who had complained about the disciples’ nontraditional practices. The Pharisees had asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat” (v. 2). According to the Pharisees’ way of thinking, this meant that the disciples were “unclean” and therefore “nonreligious.” If Jesus were a true teacher, he would have straightened these disciples out, they thought.
Everything Jesus said seems radical because Jesus is God, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are his ways our ways (Isa. 55:8). Yet it is probably the case that nothing Jesus ever said was as radical in terms of the religion of his day and all human thoughts about religion and true worship as what he told the Pharisees, crowds and disciples in the first half of Matthew 15. We get a sense of how radical this was from remembering that the same issue is treated extensively in Acts in the narrative of God’s careful preparation of Peter for carrying the gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 10:1-48), and that it is the theme of the longest of the closing application sections of Paul’s letter to the Romans (14:1—15:13).
After Jesus had rescued Peter the two of them climbed into the boat and the wind died down. That was impressive in itself. A similar effect had caused the disciples to react with awe on an earlier occasion (Matt. 8:23-27). But this is not the climax of the story in Matthew 14. The climax here is not the stilling of the waves or even Jesus' earlier words to Peter; "You of little faith, why did you doubt?” The climax is the disciples' confession of faith in Jesus and worship of Jesus in verse 33: “Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, ’Truly you are the Son of God.
The Jews were not seafaring people. So there are not many stories in the Bible about their being in peril on the sea. But I think of one! It is the story of Jonah, who tried to run away from the Lord by taking a ship from Joppa to sail to Tarshish on the far side of the Mediterranean. He was not acting in faith, as Peter was. He was defiantly disobedient. But when God sent the great storm that threatened to sink the ship in which he was sailing and when the sailors finally threw him overboard to drown, which he had told them to do, it was when he was sinking down to bottom of the sea forever and was swallowed by the great fish that Jonah turned to God again in prayer and found salvation. Jonah wrote,
When Peter looked about him and became aware of the fierce wind and saw the rolling waves he became afraid and began to sink. His faith faltered at this point. But it is important to recognize that Peter's faith did not fail utterly. He had lost faith in Jesus' ability to bear him up over the water, but he still trusted Jesus at some level since he immediately called out to him for help. "Lord, save me," he said (v. 30).
