In yesterday’s passage, have you even wondered why they
thought Jesus was a ghost?
Read Matthew 14:25-27 and journal your thoughts
So the disciples are on a boat on the water and they see
Jesus walking on the water and their first reaction is that it’s a ghost, does
this seem a bit strange to you? Why would they instantly assume it’s a ghost?
To help us with this one we have to understand two things
about the way the Jews thought, and the first is we have to understand how a
Jew would have seen the water. Remember the disciples are on the Sea of
Galilee, and this is key because a sea is not running or living water, but it’s
stationary, stagnant. They would call it part of the “deep”. Remember from
Genesis 1, at first everything was chaos, God’s Spirit was hovering over the “deep”. For the Jew the “deep” was the left over
chaos from creation. In a word, the “deep” was hell. (NOTE: Look at how many
times David talks about the “deep” in the Psalms. 42:7, 69:1, 130:1 just to
name a few. Also note that some translations use words like “depths” and
“waters”, but we miss the imagery.)
The second thing we have to consider is that compared to
the way that we think in the church, they were very superstitious, and as part
of this they believed in ghosts. They also believed that if a person sat under
a certain tree at a certain time of the day they would be demon possessed.
There were a lot of things in this ancient society that they simply didn’t
know, so of course they had superstitions.
So why do the disciples think Jesus is a ghost? Because
they are riding a boat over the deep, what else could it be?
Today may you read the Scriptures with new eyes and
discover new truths.
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