Matthew 16:1-20
The Glacier Sky Walk is located about 5 hours from here in Jasper National Park. Opening in 2014, the sky walk allows visitors to walk out over a valley that drops 300 m or 918 feet down. The actual floor is 3.18 cm thick which is just over one inch of glass. Plenty to hold you up. You can walk out and look down through the glass to the rocky valley below, as you saw in the video. To go on the skywalk requires a little bit of faith. You have to trust that the engineers designed the thing properly. You have to trust that the builders met all the specifications in building. And you have to trust that the national park or whoever owns the skywalk properly maintains it. But I suspect these factors still might not convince everyone here to take a walk on the skywalk.
So let’s take a survey. How many of you would without question try the skywalk if you had opportunity? How many of you might try to skywalk if you had some time to examine it and ensure you’re confidence in its stability? How many of you would say you couldn’t pay me enough to go out on that skywalk? There are different levels of faith in the skywalk engineering and maintenance.
We can also find different levels of faith in Jesus. Imagine a scale today that measures levels of faith in Jesus. 0 is no faith in Jesus. 1-4 would be a fledgling or small faith in Jesus. 5-7 would be a growing faith in Him. 8-10 would be a mature faith in Jesus. By faith, I mean confidence in Jesus; trust in Him for salvation, life, hope, security and peace. But where would you put yourself on this scale? How confident are you in Jesus today?
This question comes to us in the next section of the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus’ encounters with different people reveal their level of faith in Him. Today we have opportunity to examine some different levels of faith people have in Jesus. We will see how Jesus responded to each one. Then we will have some time to reexamine our own level of faith in Christ before we meet Him at His table.
